The Chronicles of Captain Craptastic
by GhostOfBambi
Summary: In this extremely AU story, set in the Muggle world, we see the Marauders as a group of crime-fighting, spotlight-hogging, fabulously-styled superheroes. No, seriously.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: I have no idea where this plot came from. I thought of it on a bus. I'm baffled as to why I felt so drawn to it. It's very AU and the premise is ridiculous. As far as plot goes, I think it's the best idea I've ever had, so just go with it, okay? I love you guys!**

* * *

**Chapter One**

She stood poised in front of the cameras with a microphone in her hand. Her ruby red lips were curved in a smile that had long entered the hearts and living rooms of her many adoring fans. She was a professional to the core and unfazed by her audience, which today comprised of a seemingly endless sea of cheering, stomping people swept up in a way of dizzying excitement while the sun – warmer than usual for a November afternoon – shone upon their backs and promised a beautiful day for the much anticipated event. Her curvaceous figure was swathed in a scarlet, form-fitting suit that accentuated every delicious curve in a way that inspired thoughts in the minds of many across the country that no other typical news reporter would have been able to accomplish. She was stylish and beautiful and glowing with triumph. This was her stage.

In her ear she heard her cue, and a moment later came the sultry, familiar tones of the nation's best loved reporter, who stood alone on an outdoor stage in a beautiful park, presenting the biggest event of the year.

"This is MçKenzie Rhae for the Metropolitan News, coming to you live from the Arcturus Black Memorial Park. We are about to witness a tremendous sight this afternoon!"

Her voice rang loud and clear from a television which sat in a cosy little room in a cosy little apartment, where a pretty, dark-haired young woman named Mary was curled up like a cat on the plush yellow sofa. She was dressed in oversized pyjamas and sipping a large mug of tea. It was also heard in the adjoining kitchen, where a long-suffering young woman was trying, and failing, to ignore the broadcast with all of her might and main.

"For God's sake, Mary MacDonald!" she called over her shoulder, spooning baked beans out of a saucepan and onto four slices of hot, buttery toast. "Turn it down or turn it off!"

"No!" was the reply from the living room. "Where is my food? You're taking ages!"

Lily Evans was twenty-two years old, living with her best friend, redhead and proud, and quite possibly the only person in the city who wasn't interested in the event currently exploding all over her television. She gave a heavily resigned sigh and picked up the tray of beans on toast. Carrying it back into the living room, she set it down on the coffee table and placed her hands on her hips.

"I told you I didn't want to watch this bullshit," she reminded her best friend. "Why is it plastered all over my television?"

"Because." Mary picked up her fork and pointed it at the television. "That hot reporter up there is one of your dearest friends. Mine too," she added, setting the plate of toast on her lap. "Since this is the biggest gig she's ever gotten and you refused to go on principle, the least we can do is watch it from home to support her."

"Right, of course," Lily muttered, flopping down into a squishy leather armchair and drawing her plate towards her on the table. "She'll feel our support from all the way over here."

"It's called Friend Telepathy, and it's proven by science," said Mary, with her eyes glued to the screen and the pretty reporter occupying it. "Shut up and eat."

Lily rolled her eyes but did as she was told, shoving her soggy toast into her mouth with a vengeance. She tried to pretend that she wasn't happy for MçKenzie Rhae when of course, she was. Unfortunately it went against her nature to begrudge people happiness. She sighed again. Life was cruel.

Lily and MçKenzie had been friends since infancy and the outgoing girl had always dreamed of being an anchor on the news. Thanks to her vivacious personality and boundless talent, the ambitious young woman was already well on her way to nationwide fame. The fact that she had been selected by four of the most famous young men in the country as their personal press correspondent had only brought good things into MçKenzie's life. It was a bitter pill for Lily to swallow given her opinion of them, but it helped to know that her friend had become such a success.

"What did you tell her you were doing that made her let you off the hook, anyway?" Mary piped up during a particularly boring speech from an important political personage whom MçKenzie was interviewing. "She'd normally never let you miss stuff like this. She'd drag you out by the hair."

This was true. MçKenzie was the most forceful and demanding person in the world, and would normally have punched them both rather than allow either of her friends to miss one of her more important live broadcasts. Mary had been excused from attending this time on account of glandular fever, and even then it was after a long and stormy battle. Kenzie had even called Mary's doctor to convince him to tell Mary she should go, but had to concede defeat. Lily, on the other hand, had been given no choice but to attend.

Lily took a dainty bite of her toast and ruined the effect by talking with her mouth full. "I told her I had an emergency appointment with the gynaecologist."

"Didn't you tell her you were at the gynaecologist when she asked you to come to her office to interview those guys last week?" said Mary who, never to be outdone, was also chewing with her mouth full. Both Mary and Lily were charmingly ladylike.

"Yup," Lily replied. "But this is an _emergency_ appointment. Perhaps I'm fictitiously pregnant."

"And Kenzie actually believed that?"

"She must have." Lily shrugged. "She's believed stupider excuses. She actually congratulated me for finally getting some."

Mary snorted. "Yeah, you getting some, _that's_ believable."

"Oh, that's nice! Am I so completely undesirable that –"

"Ooh!" Mary cut Lily off remorselessly, waving her toast and sending beans flying all over the living room. "Shut up! Look, it's them!"

The tell-tale roar of machinery blasted from the television at ear-splitting volume and Lily groaned as an impossibly large motorbike shot out onto the stage from seemingly nowhere, surrounded by a customary cloud of black smoke. Three dazzling streaks of gold light streaked downwards from on high and soared over the crowd, weaving around one another at breakneck speed before coming to land on stage beside the motorbike. A terrible electric guitar solo blared from the television speakers as the crowd burst into mass hysteria and the smoke cleared to reveal the four young men they had all been waiting for.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" cried MçKenzie, as fireworks exploded in every direction. "The Marauders!"

Lily pushed her toast away from her. "I feel sick."

If Lily were asked to describe the Marauders, she would talk of four arrogant, mediocre, barely attractive young men who hungered for fame to such a horrifying extent that they exaggerated their supposed achievements and exploited thousands of people who loved them in order to gain popularity and wealth. They had the entire world fooled into believing that everything they did was for the good of humanity, but Lily knew better. She had liked them once, but had been forced to see the light and knew now that they were nothing more than a quartet of heinous brats with a very obvious agenda.

They also happened to be the most famous superheroes that the world had ever known.

"I want to be there!" Mary whined, and a bunny slipper flew into the air as she kicked out in frustration. "It's going to be so much fun, Lily. They're having a private champagne reception afterwards and so many famous people are going to be there and Kenzie could have gotten us in!" She looked imploringly at her friend with wide eyes. "To hell with my fever, take me to the park!"

"So we can stand there like fools and cheer on those morons?" Lily raised her eyebrows at Mary. "I think I'd rather actually be pregnant."

"They're not nearly as bad as you think," said Mary fairly. "I mean, they're a bit stupid, but if you were honest with yourself you would admit that you're pissed because they're getting credit for stuff they haven't been doing."

"Well, it's true!" Lily squeaked in indignation. "Why are they pretending otherwise? It's not fair!"

"The media will make their own assumptions without needing anybody to claim responsibility for anything." Having a friend in the business had taught the girls that lesson. "You know that."

"I don't," Lily argued. "Everybody knows their style. They can't bring anyone down without making a massive fuss, even a low grade burglar. They'd never hand a rapist to the authorities by actually letting the authorities handle it once they caught him." She scowled at the television. "They'd send him flying into the news cameras with a flaming catapult, but everybody just assumes it's down to them, and what happens? They get given awards."

She pointed at the television, where the four assembled boys had finally stopped waving and blowing kisses at the audience. "Awards, Mary, for things they didn't even do!"

"If it bothers you so much, discredit them," Mary suggested, with a shrug. "If anybody can do it, you can do it. Go shift some focus."

"You know I can't possibly do that," Lily reminded her.

"Then stop whining and watch," said Mary cruelly, and nodded at the television. "She's interviewing your boyfriend."

"Great." Lily's scowl immediately became more pronounced. "Captain Dickhead."

Lily wasn't fond of any of the Marauders, but one of them annoyed her more than the other three combined. If asked to name the one whom she would _least_ like to kick in the balls, she would have named The Professor. He was a sandy-haired, serious looking young man, a known intellectual, and seemed like the nicest of the lot. He rarely spoke unless he was asked an opinion on some meaningful issue, and usually had something thoughtful and intelligent to say. Black Bachelor also kept quiet for the most part, but only because he was too busy posing on his bike wearing one of his stupid leather jackets, pouting darkly beneath his long hair and ignoring the girls who swooned and cried at his feet. Barbarian Boy seemed affable enough but had the most ridiculous name she had ever heard in her life. He was the only one who wore a mask to hide his face, and Lily assumed that it had been chosen because he was ugly and his team wanted to keep it hidden. After all, it was widely reported that Captain Spectacular chose all of their costumes, and Captain Spectacular was the vainest person on the planet.

It was unfortunate that Captain Spectacular did have some small reason to be vain, being tall and handsome and casually windswept as he was. What Lily really despised was his arrogance, blatant showmanship, and the fact that he prioritised fame and fortune over what should have been most important for someone with his ability. He was obnoxious, and as the acting spokesman for the Marauders he was so fond of the sound of his own voice that Lily felt her insides constrict whenever she had to look at his face. It baffled her that he was the most popular member. Commemorative plates with his face on them had outsold the others three to one.

Lily glared at the handsome young man on screen as he chatted gaily with her friend. "His name is the fruitiest thing I've ever heard."

"You're doing that thing where your inner monologue breaks free again," Mary informed her kindly. "It's cute and all, but I'm trying to listen to Captain Fruity's story about reading to orphans in central Nicaragua. It's very touching."

"He's reading to the orphans now?" Lily gasped, her eyes widening in shock. "He can _read_?"

Mary laughed. "He's not so bad, Lily. They have to be so popular for a reason."

"Good public relations."

"They donate a lot to charity."

"Not as much as they should."

"They're helping people!"

"Not enough people," said Lily quietly. These words had a fairly pronounced effect upon her best friend, who dropped her jokey tone and gave Lily a very serious look indeed.

"You know you need to let that go," said Mary, just as quietly, gazing concernedly at her friend. "If they'd known -"

"They did know. They're _designed_ to know," Lily retorted, and a stinging pain shot through her head. She squeezed her eyes shut while it seared behind her eyes, and in a few minutes it had passed. "How ironic," she said, and rose to her feet. "I have to go."

"Wait a second, don't get upset!" Mary half-rose from her seat as Lily went to leave the room. "Do you want to talk about it? You've seemed to be so much better lately that -"

"No, I'm fine, it's not that." Lily pointed at her head and closed her eyes again, consumed by another stabbing pain. "It's this."

"Oh, I see." Mary sank back down on the sofa and raised an eyebrow at her friend. "One of those headaches again, eh?"

"Is it ever anything else these days?" Lily walked into her bedroom and pulled open her closet. A ratty old black hoodie hung next to her brighter, prettier clothes – she grabbed it, along with a pair of equally ratty black jeans. "I shouldn't be too long this time."

"I'll have the kettle on when you get back," Mary replied from the living room. "They're easily avoided, you know, those headaches."

"You try being in my shoes," Lily responded, twisting her long red hair up into a knot at the back of her head. "And you'll see how easy it is to ignore them."

"My moral code is less strict than yours, obviously," said Mary nonchalantly, as Lily came back into the living room, already fully dressed in her ugly black outfit. "You took longer than usual."

"I'm tired," Lily shrugged. "Wish me luck?"

"Yeah, always," said Mary, watching as Lily walked over to the window and pushed it open with ease. "Don't get killed, darling."

"Don't get killed." Lily gave Mary the thumbs up before pulling her mask, an old, black balaclava which lacked in any fuss or feathers, out of her hoodie pocket. She leaned out of the window. "I'll try to remember that."

Without so much as a backwards glance at Mary, or even a look down at the ground, which lay four whole storeys beneath them, black with mid-afternoon traffic and the sounds of the city, Lily fixed the mask over her head, shimmied out of the window, and jumped.

"Bring back milk," said Mary.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: You guys are the best. Thank you for the reviews, especially the person who pointed out some of the errors I made; wondering whether or not I have things like that to fix always niggles at my mind. To anybody who found any part of Lily and Mary's conversation confusing, don't worry, I meant for that to happen. There's a lot of back story concerning Lily that I won't go into for a while. In any case, I hope you keep on enjoying this story. A bit of a warning, though, this chapter contains violence, and I decided to change the rating to reflect that. This story is getting darker the more I get into plotting it. Remember what I said about how it took a while to get serious? Yeah, forget that.**

**Also, to hushpuppy22, there's absolutely no need to worry; I hate the whole cliché of Lily's friends getting with the other Marauders. I wouldn't do it even if I was paid to.**

**CHAPTER TWO**

Lily had not been doing this for a very long time.

She didn't enjoy living a double life as a masked vigilante by any means; she already had a job that was chock full of responsibilities, night classes and errands and family, not to mention a social life to keep up with, and an ordinary life was hard enough to manage without fighting criminals on the side. If she didn't want to be bothered by cries for help ringing in her ears at all hours of the day and night, she could have stopped listening out for them - her powers were good to her like that, but instead she chose to keep on doing it.

Her abilities had been forced upon her without her consent, and she resented them at the best of times, but she felt honour bound to use them for the good of other people. It was all very well for the Marauders to swan around as they pleased, going to rallies and taking vacations and making a spectacle of themselves, but Lily didn't work like that. She felt obligated to help people in spite of her best efforts to quash that feeling, so help people she did. The fame and fortune that could have come to her were she to seek it did not hold her interest.

Superhuman powers such as her own weren't exactly ten a penny, in fact, they were virtually non-existent, and Lily had not been born with them. She wasn't sure how the Marauders had come by their abilities, save for the fact that it had been a 'funny little mishap when they were children', and she knew that they would have told MçKenzie - the only person whom they ever agreed to interviews with - the full story were they to release that information to the public. Either way, she would have bet her life that they hadn't gained their powers in the same way as she had. Far from being a funny little mishap, the very thought of her own experience made her skin crawl.

No matter how much time had passed since.

* * *

Lily covered about a mile in thirty seconds or so, purely by jumping from building to building. She was strangely unable to fly in spite of the wide range of powers she had so far discovered herself to possess, but it hadn't particularly hampered her yet. She could easily cover a hundred feet in one leap without breaking a sweat, and she was naturally agile and balanced to begin with - so it suited her. Jumping was something she was particularly good at, and probably the most enjoyable. Sometimes she even thought she might have enjoyed her powers, if she didn't resent them so much.

The girl's terrified cries were muffled by the time she reached her properly - her attacker had successfully forced his hand over her mouth - but Lily could still hear them as clearly as if his victim was screaming directly in her ear. It only took another fraction of a second before he was within her line of vision; she could see them both in an alleyway that was far darker than anyone would have expected it to be at this hour of the day, due to its convenient location amongst impossibly tall, imposing buildings. Cars were rushing past them both not ten feet away, but he had her very well hidden behind a dumpster. Nobody would have seen her trapped between him and the dirty wall, and her screams would have been muted by the noise of the city, even if it was less busy than usual because of that stupid Marauder love-fest that was going on in the park.

Lily did not like to waste time, and she wasn't going to do so on this occasion. With unfathomable speed and without making a sound, she launched herself from her spot on top of the roof and landed catlike on the ground not inches away from the struggling duo who were pressed against the wall. The man was a great deal bigger than both Lily and his victim, who was still struggling valiantly to escape his clutches. He was clearly enjoying her fight, judging by the way he was grunting with pleasure as his hands began to move towards her shirt, with evident design to tear it open.

Lily tapped him on the shoulder. He turned in shock, and even if she had been lacking the phenomenally heightened senses that came with being superhuman, she would still have been overwhelmed by the stale, filthy stench of alcohol that emanated from his person. It made her want to vomit, and she very nearly retched.

His eyes were unfocused as he tried to search her face, but her balaclava was thick enough to hide her features from view; he found nothing. "What the fu-"

She punched him in the mouth, because the direct approach had always been a favourite of hers.

The force at which she hit him was so great that Lily had to grab him by the front of his collar to make sure that he didn't go flying back and send the poor girl behind him hurtling straight through a brick wall. She flung him, instead, over her shoulder and across the alleyway where he landed with a sickening thud in a pile of bulging garbage bags, bursting several, and splattering the walls and ground with putrid, decomposed food.

She walked over to the garbage bags, where he was desperately flailing in an attempt to get up.

"W-w-ho the hell are.. are you?" he wheezed, clutching his chest as he gasped for breath. Lily could see clearly that she had broken several of his teeth. She didn't care, because she was already half-blind with rage. It was all she could do not to pull the guy apart with her bare hands, but she knew she couldn't cause him further injury, so she grabbed him again by the front of his collar and pulled him to his feet.

She had been listening out for a certain something and could now hear a very, _very_ distant rumbling, which meant that she had maybe only a few seconds of time left to handle all of this.

"That's really none of your business now, is it?" she hissed, not even flinching as he kicked out at her in his haste to struggle free. The girl he had been pressed up against merely moments ago was still standing in the same spot, frozen solid with shock, and she was more worth Lily's attention right now. It was nothing for her to push the revolting cretin to the ground and sit on his back, pinning his arms behind him, and despite his struggling she held him down as easily as if she weighed a tonne. "You just stay there and shut up for a second, you filthy little shit."

She looked up at the girl, who was still pretty shaken, and felt, as she always did when she had to go out and do something like this, like she was going to cry. "Are you okay?"

The girl _was_ crying, and the sheer shock of the whole situation must have kicked in at that moment because her legs gave way and she slid down against the wall. The rumbling in Lily's ears grew louder.

"I'm going to be able to help you in just a minute," she assured her kindly, making sure to keep her voice as steady and calm as possible no matter how she may have been feeling to the contrary. "Once I can be sure that this prick's not going to run off, but could you do me a favour and give me your phone so I can call the police?"

"Uh, sure," said the girl shakily, and began to rummage through her purse, which had obviously fallen to the ground before Lily had even got there. "Sorry, I can't quite, my hands are shaking."

"It's okay, take your time," said Lily placidly, and reached around the man's head to press a hand against his mouth, just as the rumbling she had been hearing so loudly manifested itself in the form of that rotten motorbike, and those three equally rotten streaks of light that zipped alongside it. The Marauders, arriving to do the job she had just beaten them to a couple of minutes too late, just as she had expected.

Lily's hands did their job beautifully; the blood that had been seeping from the man's mouth had cleared by the time the bike pulled up, and his teeth returned to their previous state. She couldn't allow the guy to show any signs of being roughed up, not if they were going to make it look like the police found him and he was going to go to court over what she had caught him doing.

"You again?"

Lily rolled her eyes at the Marauders as they instantly formed a line between herself and the girl she had just protected. "Me again, go figure."

She stood up, pulling the creep to his feet with her, and shoved him at the four young men who were staring at the scene as though utterly baffled, even though this was the fifth time in recent memory that they had happened to stumble across her when they both went after the same person. Her hostage landed directly in the clutches of the one who had just yelled at her, the hapless ringleader, although he proved that he had at least _one_ functioning brain cell by immediately holding the guy upright with his arms behind his back.

What a surprise. He had miraculously grasped the fact that Lily had not just pushed a random, innocent civilian in his direction.

"I was banking on you showing up right about now," she said bitingly, pushing her way through the four of them with ease. "It'll make this so much easier. Hold him there while I call the police, won't you?"

She sat down next to the shaking girl, who had just located her phone, and laid a hand on her arm. "How are you feeling? Are you hurt?"

"My head hurts, and my elbow, but nothing else," she said quietly, her gaze shifting erratically from Lily to the assembled men every couple of moments, her face still wet with tears. "Are you all Marauders?"

"_They_ are," said Lily promptly, pressing her hand gently against the back of the girl's head, and immediately the large bump that had been there began to subside. "You've got a few scratches and cuts and I can't get rid of those because we need proof that this guy hurt you, but in case you have a head injury, I don't want to chance it."

"Oh," said the girl, still clearly dazed and shaken. She looked as if she was in a dream world; she probably thought she was. "Thank you so much."

"Don't mention it," said Lily, and held her palm out to her. "I'm going to need your phone now, um..."

"Oh, it's Jennifer," said the girl, pressing her phone into Lily's hand with a shaky little smile. "Jennifer Jones. Who're, um... what's your name?"

Lily shrugged, already typing out a familiar number into the girl's mobile phone. "Just call me Jane or something, whatever you like. I don't really mind."

"You don't have a _name_?" came the incredulous tones of that jumped up little moron from behind her. "_What_?"

Lily did seem to roll her eyes a lot more often when the Marauders were around, or when somebody was talking about the Marauders. Particularly when the subject was Captain Spectacular, but _most _often when the subject himself was talking to her, no matter what about. Every time they had run into each other he had made moronic enquiries as to her identity and every time she had resisted the urge to kick him squarely between the legs. An urge that she would hopefully give in to one day soon.

She looked over her shoulder at the stupid prat. "Excuse me?"

"You said you don't have a name," he repeated, frowning at her as though something confused him greatly. Maybe he was easily confused.

"So?" She stood up and turned to face the four of them. "What's it to you?"

"You have to have a name," piped up Black Bachelor, from beneath his hopelessly floppy fringe and within his hopelessly pretentious leather jacket. "How come you don't?"

"Well, obviously I have a _name_," she sighed in frustration, with the phone already pressed to her ear, and pressed down on the dial button. "It's on my birth cert, it's female, it's not something I want to share with you. Just hold the guy and keep your mouths shut." The person she had been calling picked up the phone and the Marauders were no longer important. "Hey Brian, it's me."

"Hey," came a voice on the other end of the phone, while Captain Spectacular looked at each of his friends in confusion and mouthed 'her name is Brian?' to The Professor, who merely shrugged and looked amused. "Where are you this time?"

"In an alleyway just off Hawthorne street between Bradley's pharmacy and the Dandelion restaurant," she said, making motions with her hands for the Marauders to shut up. "I cleaned him up already, you can just fly over and get him if you like. How long will you be?"

"About ten minutes, if you can wait until then."

"Yeah, sure." It meant ten more minutes with the Marauders, but it was as short an amount of time as she could have realistically hoped for. "I'll wait here with the four stooges, they turned up after I did. One of them can, oh," she covered the phone mouthpiece with her hand and looked at the four men. "One of you can bring her to the station for her statement, right?"

"Don't we always?" muttered Barbarian Boy, with his arms folded across his chest. Lily uncovered the mouthpiece and spoke into it again.

"One of them will bring her down, okay? They'll get there faster if they fly."

"And it means you don't have to turn up and nobody else has to know you exist, I know, I know," said Brian, to which Lily clucked with impatience. "I'm on my way now."

That done, she hung up the phone, and handed it back to Jennifer, who was still sitting on the ground and still completely confused.

"That was my friend I was talking to," Lily explained to her, and held out her hand so that she could tug the frightened girl to her feet. "He's a police officer. He'll be here any minute to arrest this creep and then one of the Marauders will take you to the police station, so they can get a statement from you, okay?"

Jennifer nodded, taking Lily's hand and allowing her to pull her up. She immediately stood behind her, as if protecting herself from the creep who was still struggling in Captain Spectacular's PVC-clad arms. "Um, yeah, sure. Will somebody take me home after?"

"Yeah, of course," said Lily. "Just, um, if anybody asks, Brian just happened upon you when you were being attacked and arrested the guy, then these guys turned up and found you, and I wasn't ever here, okay? I'm kind of not supposed to exist," she added, in a conspiratorial tone.

"I don't... really understand why, but okay." She looked around at all five of the assembled vigilantes who were surrounding her. "I'm sorry, I'm really confused."

"Don't worry about it," said Black Bachelor all of a sudden, and came forward to take the girl's hand, smiling at her in that charming way he had about him. Lily did not see the appeal in any way and never had, but whatever powers that smile might have contained, they worked, for Jennifer calmed down a tiny fraction and her hands stopped shaking _quite_ so much. "The three of us can take you to the station now, you'll be completely safe, and our fearless leader can keep this wanker captive until the police gets here."

"You shouldn't have to stay around him for even a second longer," said The Professor, coming slowly forward and standing on her other side, gently taking her elbow. "We can walk you, if you don't feel up to flying."

"Maybe a nice little stroll is exactly what you need," agreed Barbarian Boy, lumbering over amiably with a bar of chocolate in hand. Now surrounded by the, even Lily had to admit, oddly comforting aura of the three young men who were pleasantly urging her onwards, Jennifer allowed herself to be slowly led away, but kept on looking over her shoulder at Lily the entire time.

"Thank you," she mouthed again, as they reached the end of the alleyway and became bathed in sunlight. Lily supposed she'd have to do something to accept her thanks, and so she waved somewhat awkwardly. A second later, she was left alone in the alleyway with a revolting, would-be rapist and Captain Spectacular, who was still frowning at her. Perhaps he hadn't ever stopped.

"What are you looking at?" she practically spat, glaring at him, not that he would have been able to see. His hair was jet black and so messy that Lily was sure he had somehow styled it that way on purpose; it looked too effortless to be effortless. Pretty, but still infuriating in its own way.

"Not much," he retorted childishly. "Unless you can find muchness in a superhero who doesn't even have a proper name."

"You're so wonderfully able to focus on bullshit when you're having a conversation and ignore what's important," said Lily pleasantly. "I'm not a superhero, I'm a pissed off woman. Learn to differentiate."

"What's important is the fact that you just saved a girl from being raped by a creep that I am now holding captive until some bloke named Brian turns up, whenever that will be," he replied smoothly. "But pardon me if I don't like chatting about unpleasant things while we kill time."

"I guess making chit-chat about your costume is out of the question, then," she shot back, eyeing his red and gold ensemble, which wasn't _exactly_ unpleasant to behold, considering the way it fit his frame, but was most certainly the gayest thing she'd ever seen.

"Pot. Kettle. Black." He eyed _her_ ratty black getup with blatant distaste. "And you _are_ a superhero, you've got superhuman powers and you do heroic things. By definition, that is what you are. Although I'm not denying that you're a pissed off woman, either."

"I am most definitely not a superhero," she insisted stonily.

"Then who the fuck are you," hissed the enraged creep who was still rendered immobile in Captain Spectacular's vice-like grip, to which the aforementioned captor shook him violently.

"SHUT UP!" both he and Lily bellowed at the same time, and then turned their attention on one another again, that taken care of. The creep cowered in Captain Spectacular's grip.

"You were about to make an impassioned speech about how much of an ass I am, or something predictable like that," he said, inclining his head towards her. He was so very smug, it made her blood boil.

"You must be psychic," she chirped sweetly.

"Although, I'm sure we already established last time we met that anything you have to say to me is irrelevant until you let me see your face," he continued, pushing his glasses up his nose and narrowing his eyes at her as if he were expecting to see through her balaclava. "Not that the whole woman of mystery thing isn't interesting, but it's getting a little old, love."

"Coming from the king of all that is contrite," Lily snapped. Here he went again with wanting to see her face. Captain Spectacular had decided on their first meeting that the five of them should join forces to become some sort of super-group and had been most offended when Lily had turned his offer down flat. Since then, he seemed to have become preoccupied with finding out more about her. He was clearly one of those guys who couldn't resist a challenge, no matter what it was. "Go cry me a river and drown in it."

He was the one to roll his eyes this time, just as a police car turned into the alleyway and Lily's eyes were assaulted by glaring lights. She wasted not a moment as soon as the car had stopped, marching over and opening the driver's door, while Captain Spectacular continued to stand in the same spot with the man Lily had beaten the living daylights out of only moments before - who now bore not a sign of it - muttering asides about how he could breathe underwater anyway, which may or may not have been true, who really cared?

"Hey," she said to the driver of the car, a brown haired, pleasant looking young man named Brian Costelloe, a friend of hers whom she had known for several years. "The girl's already on her way to the station with three of the Marauders. Ask Captain Speedo over there if he'll come with you if he wants, I need to go get changed. And buy some milk for Mary, actually," she added, suddenly remembering Mary's request in a flash that she liked to call her return to normalcy. Thinking of Mary was warm and comforting, like thinking of home.

"Go to the metro stop beside the station after you get changed, okay?" said Brian, dragging a backpack containing a change of clothes for her off the passenger seat of the car and handing it to her. This was a routine they had worked out months ago. "I want to drive you home."

"I can go home by myself, Brian," she said, and laughed softly, but without any humour. "I'll take me under a minute."

"Look," he said quietly, but with a certain steely determination in his voice that she had long since learned hinted at a refusal to give in no matter how long the debate may rage. "You're exhausted and I haven't seen you in goodness knows how long; I'm driving you home."

"Fine, whatever," she said, knowing that there was no point in arguing without incurring the guy's endless whining for the next few weeks, and shouldered the backpack as Brian got out of the car and moved swiftly over to the man who was even _now_ still struggling to break free. "Knock yourself out."

* * *

"You got your milk, then?"

Sliding into the car and wishing she could have just walked home, Lily waved her carton of milk at Brian, with a rather uncomfortable smile that more resembled a grimace. "Thank you for sticking some money in the backpack, I'll pay you back. I always forget to bring it."

It was hours after Lily had apprehended that man, whom she had later discovered was a married barman named Jason Stenson, darkness had fallen, and she was cranky because she had stupidly waited around for Brian after getting changed instead of just going home to her cosy apartment and her best friend, who was very sick and who Lily was worried about. The arrest process had taken as long as it always did; but things had been hampered by the roaring crowd who had gathered outside the police station upon hearing that the Marauders were somewhere around. Apparently they had left in the middle of their own award ceremony upon hearing Jennifer's cries for help and left everybody baffled. Lily would have found it endearing, had it not all been such a blatant publicity stunt.

She was tired and hungry and grumpy, and just wanted to go home and lay her head in Mary's lap.

"You should stick some into your jeans pocket when you get home," Brian suggested, as he started up the car. Lily's apartment was not far from the metro station, luckily she'd be home in a matter of minutes. "To make sure you don't forget next time."

"Uh huh," she said, not really able to think of anything else to say that wasn't something bitingly sarcastic. "Yeah."

They drove in silence for a minute or two, Brian keeping his eyes on the road and Lily idly examining her nails, both of them trying to ignore the thick, awkward atmosphere that hung in the air between them and had done so for nearly a year and a half now. Lily had expected it to get better once upon a time. It hadn't.

Brian evidently tried of the quiet, because after another awkward stretch of road, he tried again.

"So, um, how are you lately?" he said, and gave her a sidelong glance. "Feeling okay?"

Lily felt her insides squirm, and not in a pleasant way. She didn't like discussing her personal life with him, no matter how lightly. "I'm feeling good, thanks."

"Not tired or anything?"

"Not at all."

"Is work okay?"

"Yes, Brian," she sighed wearily, leaning her head back against the seat. She knew what he was trying to get at, and she wished for the millionth time that she had stuck to her original decision to go home by herself. "Work is great, work is fine. _I'm_ fine," she added. "You don't have to worry about me."

Brian sighed, and gave the steering wheel of the car an unnecessarily hard turn as they rounded a corner.

"It's just," he began tentatively, and Lily could tell that he was really struggling with what he wanted to say. It didn't matter, she knew what he was trying to get at anyway. "Those calls have been coming more and more frequently."

"Well, I've been working more and more frequently. Rapists and murderers don't give up raping and murdering just so I can get some shut-eye."

"Well, that's the problem, Lily," he continued, and Lily, who was used to having this conversation every time Brian so much as laid eyes on her, was beginning to feel like she was being harassed. "You're doing too much, and you're only one person, and I don't want you to burn yourself out or anything because you-"

"I won't burn myself out, okay?" she said, turning her head to look at him, and trying to be pleasant even though she felt like slapping his face. "I don't need to rest, or take a break from work, or go to a spa and have my sodding nails done. And I _don't_ need you to drive me home, either, I can do it myself."

"This is so like you, Lily," he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the road. "You never let me take care of you," he continued. "Not even while we were dating."

"Then this shouldn't exactly be a shock to the system," she replied, somewhat coldly. He was always doing this, bringing up their past relationship, making things between them more strained than they already were. It wouldn't have been so bad, were his real motives not so selfish. "Should it?"

"I don't know, okay?" They had turned up the road that Lily's apartment was located on, and he pulled up outside her building, but made no motion to open the car door from the inside, like he normally did. "I thought that after what happened last year, you might..."

"What?" asked Lily dully. "Embrace codependency? Suddenly developing the power to make entire buildings go up in flames sort of makes it easier to take care of yourself, Brian, or didn't you get that memo?"

"You told me," he said levelly. "When you broke up with me, that you knew you had some problems and you were going to work on them and that it wasn't all my fault, and that-"

"I've never said it was all your fault before or since, have I?"

"You said that maybe one day we'd talk about getting back together," he carried on determinedly. "That was a year and a half ago, Lily, and I understand that what happened to you six months after that was really-"

"We don't talk about that," she interrupted him quickly. "I told you we don't talk about that."

"Sometimes," he said, and faltered for a moment before going gamely on. "Sometimes I think you're using that whole experience as an excuse to keep us from getting back toge-"

"Sometimes I think you're using it as an excuse because you don't want to face the fact that we're not right for each other," she said quickly. "We ended before that shit happened; I've not stopped saying sorry since, and I am sorry, but I'm tired, and I'm emotionally drained after every time I see you and I'm absolutely sick of it, and I can't keep having this conversation with you."

"You never can, though, can you?" he said, and the bitterness became clear in his voice for the first time only when Lily got out of the car. "You won't even consider the fact that you might just be scared to be with me."

Lily gritted her teeth, squeezed her eyes shut, and clenched her hands into fists.

"I'm going inside, Brian," she said shortly, looking back into the window at his now frowning face. "Mary's waiting, and she's worried sick about me even though she pretends not to when I'm around because she knows how much I hate making people worry. She's good like that," she added, and even though she closed the car door with not much force, it still managed to slam shut. "I'll call you later. Or something."

**A/N: It makes me laugh when I have to write something serious and stick the superhero names of one of the Marauders into it, seriously. What right does someone named Captain Spectacular have to catch rapists, seriously? I can't wait until they're on first name terms. Coming up next is a chapter that I think you Lily/James fans out there might be happy about. Yay?**


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note: Hey guys, it's a third chapter for you! After I post this I am taking a short break from this story to update Potterella and one of my older fics because they need some attention, so I hope this one will be enjoyed. It has definitely been the most fun to write so far.**

**I've been getting such a strong reaction to this story, which is really strange and hilarious. People have even sent me emails, which rarely happens. I don't normally like answering questions about my fics while they're being written but in answer to Kapow (who I couldn't reply to personally because he/she didn't sign in! Sadface!), nope, Lily was never raped and James, Sirius, Remus and Peter don't hide their identities - there's a reason why but I can't explain it until later on in the story, same with how they all got their powers. **

**As for Peter's mask, he only wears it because he thinks it looks cool. Boys, eh?**

**CHAPTER THREE**

"Why are you not pregnant?"

The question was thrown at Lily with a vengeance from across an impossibly modern glass desk in an office on the top floor of a building that was smack bang in the centre of the wealthiest part of the city; the main building for the Metropolitan News. The desk itself was mostly hidden beneath stacks and stacks of papers, shopping bags, framed photographs of its owner posing with tanned Hollywood teen idols, randomly scattered cosmetics, and two little plastic tubs of salad. In spite of how Lily's natural instincts to make everything pristine howled with rage from within, even she had to admit that this was pretty tidy for MçKenzie Rhae.

MçKenzie was a very busy woman nowadays. When she wasn't reporting for the news she was writing articles for two different newspapers, appearing on weekly radio and television segments, flying abroad to interview famous people or having yet another rendezvous with the Marauders. Lily had even heard it told that her friend was writing a biography of the four of them, but she just hadn't the stomach to ask her about it and hear her reply in the affirmative, especially not while she was eating.

"MçKenzie," she said, holding her fork aloft as she regarded her friend with bewilderment. "Stop questioning my fertility while I'm trying to eat my salad."

"It's not your fertility I'm questioning," said MçKenzie with a wounded look on her face, and pouted at her tomato slices. "I thought you'd had sex, it was joyous news. I was going to have a plaque made commemorating the date you lost your V-card."

"I already lost my V-card," Lily reminded her wearily. "As you very well know."

"Pish," MçKenzie waved her point away with her perfectly manicured hand. "Brian doesn't count, besides, it's been so long that your vagina has probably forgotten and re-sealed itself."

"Please, don't say vagina while I'm eating."

"Fine, I'll call it your Kevin."

"….. _Kevin_, MçKenzie? _Really_?"

"Not that Brian was ever all that memorable anyway," she continued to babble, and then sighed. "Your poor Kevin probably forgot all about him on purpose."

"Oi!" Lily threw her napkin at her friend. "Enough, I don't need to be reminded of the follies of my rash and stupid youth, okay?" Brian was on hand to remind her of those too much as it was, she didn't need her friends jumping on the bandwagon. "Also, what are you so worked up about? I never told you I'd had sex with anybody, you made that up on your own."

"It was implied with the double whammy vajayjay appointments," MçKenzie insisted, waggling her fork at Lily whilst simultaneously checking her teeth out in the large, light-up cosmetic mirror that she inexplicably brought to her office with her every morning. "Nobody goes twice in one week unless they've caught something in coitus."

"You're implying that a baby is a sexually transmitted disease?"

"It's a sexually transmitted pain in the ass, same thing. Ooh, these tomatoes are yummy."

"Your tomato addiction baffles me, Kenzie," said Lily airily, picking up a nail file that lay wedged beneath a pile of magazines. She had noticed the night before that her nails were in need of some tender loving care when she was in the car, and considering the conversation that had gone on between she and her ex-boyfriend, that discovery was probably the only useful thing that had come out of the entire evening.

"Your addiction to celibacy baffles _me_," Kenzie retorted, munching on tomatoes with gusto. "You better hurry up, Lillers, the men are dying out fast."

"Don't I know it," said Lily dryly, rolling her eyes. "I should pick some bloke at random and gobble him up before somebody else does."

MçKenzie wasn't being metaphorical, and Lily wasn't either. Over the past few months, six men from the city, all of whom were around the same age and of similar appearance, had been reported missing by their families, and the searches that had been conducted by the police, the volunteers, the Marauders and even Lily herself had mysteriously proven fruitless. That was until just a week ago, when a woman walking her dog in the suburbs had happened upon, not one body, but an entire pile lying together in a ditch. All six men were discovered in varying states of dismemberment with organs removed and bite marks where chunks of flesh were missing, as if they had literally been eaten alive. The newspapers had had a field day printing stories about a Man-eater prowling the street and an investigation had been launched, but there hadn't even been a shred of DNA evidence to go on. Whoever or whatever had killed those men had covered their tracks wisely.

It wasn't particularly classy to make jokes about it, but Kenzie brought that side out of her.

"That's my girl. _Aaaaand_," said Kenzie, brightening up quite considerably. "If you need any help in becoming a man-eating femme fatale, aside from my considerable experience, I'm going out for dinner with Bella on Friday night and she told me to invite whoever. You're whoever, so you're coming."

"I might actually be busy on Friday," Lily immediately lied. She wasn't at all fond of Bellatrix Black, but Kenzie absolutely loved her. The woman was a combative, entitled princess who looked down her nose at everybody, even people of a higher social standing. Her younger sister Andie was a darling and her youngest sister Narcissa was a little bit sweet when she needed to be, but Bellatrix was a raging shrew who thought she was a cut above just because she was a _model_, of all things. Lily would have gone out on a date with Captain Spectacular before she went to dinner with Bella Black. "We have to take inventory at the shop; and I've got orders to fill, I might have to stay late that evening and then Mary's having her boyfriend over and she can't cook but she wants to make him dinner, so I said I'd..."

"The financial year ended in September so you already did stocktake, Mary's a _fabulous_ cook, and you're coming," said MçKenzie flatly, tossing her thick, dark hair over one shoulder and pursing her glossy red lips. "Mary too, she can bring Eddie along if she wants, he amuses me. You both missed my rally so you can make up for it now."

"_Kenzieee_," Lily whined like a baby. "Why can't you take Pedro?" Pedro was one of two of MçKenzie's Spanish boyfriends; she had a thing for stringing men along, particularly those of Mediterranean roots. "Better yet, why don't you and Pedro take a holiday to Valencia and tan?"

She heard something strange buzzing in her ear all of a sudden, but dismissed it as her imagination; she had had to resign herself to not listening out for danger during her work hours.

"I do love to tan," MçKenzie sighed, giving the very last slice of tomato a sad look before chomping it down. The strange buzzing in Lily's ear got a little louder. "But Pedro's not talking to me because I took Antonio to that breast cancer research charity ball thing last week when Pedro's mother had breast cancer and he thought I was being insensitive, or some such stupid shit. He'll get over it, and I don't care if he does, I can just give Antonio a call and have him come over and take me to..."

The rest of whatever she was saying trailed off into nothingness; Lily was no longer listening to MçKenzie, her attentions had just been caught by something utterly horrifying.

Her hearing may have been a thousand times better than they average person, but Lily was fortunate in that this was only a selective process because she would have been forced to suffer from a constant migraine otherwise. She could ignore sounds at will, so although her ears were almost always pricked for screams of terror or cries for help, and sometimes those cries came from so far away that it physically hurt her head to pick up on them, for the most part she could hear things happen like any regular person, with a small few exceptions.

One such exception had just entered the building.

It wasn't a voice that Lily particularly enjoyed hearing and so she simply couldn't understand why she could always immediately pick up on it without fail when he was in the vicinity, nor could she understand why it refused to stop ringing in her ears until she was far, far away from him. It was upsetting, but not as upsetting as the knowledge that he was clearly in the building right now and, judging by the increase in volume as each second passed, moving ever closer to the top floor.

"Lily?" said MçKenzie, not remotely concerned, but annoyed because Lily clearly wasn't paying attention. "You're doing that thing again, where you-"

"Voice my inner monologue?" she interrupted her, just to shut her up, so focused was she on listening to the voice that was steadily drifting closer.

"No," said MçKenzie. "The other thing, where you-"

"Stare at nothing in particular like a lunatic," Lily interrupted her again, and then blinked erratically several times, as if doing this would somehow make her appear _less_ psychotic. "Got it."

"Are you going to explain why you're doing it, or is this a guessing game?" MçKenzie continued to cut in on her listening and was rudely shushed by Lily who, after another couple of seconds, correctly guessed exactly what fate was just about to befall her.

"That moron is in the building, _isn't_ he?" she whispered to MçKenzie as quietly, yet as angrily as she could, acutely aware that if she could hear Captain Arsehole, he could probably hear her, should he be the sort of fellow to eavesdrop on conversations going on around him. Knowing her luck, he probably was. "You've got a meeting with him today, don't you? He's coming _here_, isn't he? I'm going to have to _meet _him in _person_, aren't I?"

"What?" MçKenzie started blankly at her friend as Lily half-rose out of her seat and immediately started stuffing the last of the salad into her mouth with haste, because she was starving, and she didn't want to have to stop and buy another salad on the way back to work just because she had been scared away from lunch by a foolhardy superhero and his gigantic ego. "He won't be here for another ten minutes, relax!"

"Shush! He'll hear! You lied to me!" Lily continued to hiss like an angry snake, more for dramatic effect than anything else. MçKenzie was always trying to introduce the Marauders to Lily and Lily was always backing out at the last minute, unwilling to meet them as herself but also unwilling put them down too harshly in front of the girl whose career they had help to kick-start. She had only ever run into the idiots during a handful of her vigilante exploits, never while she was walking around in the everyday world as herself, and she wasn't sure she wanted to. If he recognized her voice or even picked up on something in her general demeanour that reminded him of her masked alter-ego, she'd be utterly done for, and he would harass her about it until the day she died.

"Seriously, Lily," MçKenzie repeated lazily, picking up a magazine and leafing through it. "He's not due in until two, it's only ten to. Did you read my appointment book when I went to the loo or something? If you did I'm a little bit freaked out by the super delayed reaction."

"No, idiot girl." Having polished off all of the salad that she could stomach in such a small amount of time, Lily swung her handbag over her shoulder and chewed on her lip as she surveyed her friend's desk to see if she had left anything there. He was undoubtedly going to appear at that door in a matter of seconds. "I have asshole radar, okay?"

"Is that it?" asked MçKenzie, quirking one eyebrow upwards as she perused an article about The Best Pair of Jeans for You. "Why'd you still talk to Brian, then?"

Lily stopped in her tracks, and dropped her handbag back on the desk.

"You never mention Brian _this_ much in conversation," she pointed out, quite correctly. "Did Mary tell you about our row in his car last night, and if so, why didn't you kick her ass for betraying one of the oldest and most sacred rules in the friendship bible?"

"Thou shalt not let my friends have sex with French guys because they're icky?"

"Thou shalt not spill secrets, Kenzie!" Lily would have stomped her foot in frustration had she not been scared to put a hole in the floor - normally she could have managed it with relatively human force, but her nerves were shot to ribbons. "And what on earth is wrong with French guys? Did you know that it's customary in France for red headed women to be treated with great resp -"

"Um, hello?"

The voice came from behind her all of a sudden, and even though she had known it was coming, she still nearly jumped out of her skin with fright, entirely unprepared to go through with meeting this imbecile. She wondered if Kenzie had planned for this to happen.

"Oh, hi," said MçKenzie, cocking her head to the side as she surveyed her new guest. Lily still hadn't turned around, she _couldn't_, lest she go bright red or explode with anxious laughter or simply lose her head and kill the guy straight out, which probably would have been a difficult task to accomplish, given the circumstances. "You're early."

"Sirius set my watch forward an hour, I thought I was late." He was talking, of course, about Sirius Black, also known to the people of the city (even Lily, who couldn't have given two shits about famous people) and almost exclusively to the rest of the world as Black Bachelor. "Am I interrupting something?"

"No, no, it's fine," said Lily quickly, who could now delay the moment no longer without appearing completely psychotic, and spun around on her heel to face him, like ripping a Band-Aid from a wound with haste. "I didn't know you were coming, I'll just g-"

The very moment Lily turned around, looked at him, and actually caught his gaze properly, his eyes widened in what must have been surprise and he stared at her, just _stared_, dumbstruck and slightly open-mouthed, which was weird as it was, but for absolutely _no_ reason whatsoever she realized after a moment or two that she was doing the _exact_ same thing, and gawking at him.

She could only assume that he figured out who she really was in a heartbeat, and was therefore staring at her like that because the shock of finding the information he wanted so very easily had momentarily killed him.

She, however, had no such reason to explain her own reaction to his gaze, nor why she blushed so hard, nor why the first thing she did when she eventually did regain the use of her functions was to self-consciously fix her hair. How embarrassing.

"I'll, um, I'll just go, then," she murmured, ignoring the silent giggles that she knew MçKenzie's shoulders were shaking with, because of _course_ she had planned this all from the beginning, and hurried out of the room, squeezing past him as she went. The elevator was thankfully open when she reached it and she threw herself inside, leaning against the wall with relief as soon as the doors closed in front of her. His voice was beginning to buzz in her ears; evidently he was talking to Kenzie about something, and she blocked it out with great effort.

He was, incidentally, far more attractive when he was dressed in regular clothes.

In a bid to get a hold of her senses once again when the elevator started to descend, Lily rummaged through her purse for her phone so that she could call the bookshop and check on a few deliveries that had been meant to arrive that day. There was nothing like work to slap her back into reality, especially now that it was December and she and her staff were coming into their most hectic time of the year. She had to speak to her assistant manager about getting a little coffee bar set up in shop in time for Christmas and organizing a vampire themed party because some God-awful books about the undead bastards were all the rage this year.

The elevator had travelled down two floors by the time Lily had the phone pressed to her ear, and she had literally just dialled when the doors slid open once more and she was greeted by the sight of the last person she had been expecting to see.

She hung up the phone.

"Um, hi," he said, looking sheepish.

If it had been within Lily's powers to evaporate into nothingness on the spot, she would have done so right then and there because it was now blatantly obvious that he knew who she was. He must have known, there was no other reason why he would have run down the stairs (although really, that would have taken him all of two seconds) in order to stop her on the elevator. He wanted to rub it in her face that he had finally figured it out. She was doomed.

"Hi," she replied apprehensively, eyeing him as if he were likely to whip out a grenade and throw it into the elevator. "Can I help you?"

"Actually, uh, yeah," he replied awkwardly, scratching the back of his head, his eyes darting this way and that as he blatantly ignored her gaze. "I, um, I… left something in the elevator."

Lily blinked. "Pardon?"

"Just now, when I got off the elevator?" he attempted to clarify. He appeared to be even more flustered than she felt. "I left something on it and I came back to see if it was here. Is it here?"

"Uh. Okay." Lily quickly scanned the bottom of the elevator and found nothing, the floor was completely bare. "There's nothing here. What did you forget?"

"Can't remember." His voice was shaky and he was still avoiding her eye determinedly. Perhaps he was now suddenly scared to reveal he knew her secret in case she kicked him in the crotch. Even superheroes had sensitive balls. "Mustn't have brought it."

"Right." There was nothing else to say, if that was the case. "Okay then." She pushed the elevator button and the doors began to slide shut again, much to her relief. "Bye."

He stood there in silence and watched her as she waited for the doors to slide shut, and then as they finally began to close, and right when he was about to fully disappear from view for the second time that day, thus sparing Lily from an eternity of headaches, he sprung. Shoving his hand into the tiny gap left between the doors, he forced them open as easily as if they weighed nothing at all.

"You're Lily Evans," he said breathlessly, even though his actions must not have cost him much effort. He leaned against the frame of the doorway with his arms folded, went pink, and stood up straight again. "Aren't you?"

"Yes, I am." She was secretly being filmed for one of those hidden camera blooper shows. Any minute now Captain Spectacular was going to pie her in the face and all of her friends were going to spill out of the surrounding office doors and everyone was going to have a good laugh about it and she'd be known as Lemon Meringue Lily for the rest of her life. "How did you know that?"

"Oh, MçKenzie, she told me. She tells me a lot about you, actually, and seeing as how we've never met, I thought I should - yeah," he held his hand out for Lily to shake. "I'm -"

"Captain Spectacular," Lily cut in, taking his hand and shaking it even though she didn't much want to. "I know."

To her absolute astonishment, his face screwed up in embarrassment. "Actually, it's uh, it's just James."

She blinked. "James?"

"Yeah, James Potter, it's my real name, slash preferred name," he explained, and gave her an apologetic sort of look when they both realized that he was still holding her hand. He dropped it immediately. "You recognized me, then?"

Lily had actually heard the Marauders' real names before, since none of them had ever bothered to hide their identities, and she vaguely remembered reading about it in an article once that she hadn't devoted much attention to and therefore she would not have been able to recall all of their first names were she to be asked about it.

Sure, she knew that Sirius Black was Black Bachelor, but everybody knew who Sirius Black was. The Blacks were the most prominent political figureheads in the city, and they practically ran the place. Sirius' father Orion was the mayor, his mother was a minister for education, he had aunts and uncles who were also high up in politics and his brother was, as far as Lily was aware, studying law abroad or something of that nature. Three of his cousins, a set of sisters, were involved in the entertainment industry and the oldest sister Bellatrix was a fashion model and the city's most sought after socialite. The fact that Sirius had turned his hand to fighting crime was nothing more than another string in the ever expanding Black family bow. His parents probably wouldn't have allowed him to conceal his identity even if he wanted to.

"Well, yes, I haven't been living under a rock," she said smoothly, surreptitiously trying to press the elevator button again. "My roommate's boyfriend is a big fan, actually. I should tell him I met you."

"What about yours?" he replied quickly, as the doors made to close and he immediately forced them open again. People in the corridor had stopped to stare at them and Lily was beginning to feel embarrassed. If he wanted to reveal his knowledge of her second life, that was fine, Lily probably would have done the same in his situation. She would not, however, have messed around with his head first by pretending to be interested in getting to know him. What was he playing at?

She stared him down as if trying to read his true intentions, and came up with absolutely nothing. His usual pomp and bravado were gone, and with the plain old t-shirt and jeans he was wearing, he looked just like any other regular, down-to-earth, devastatingly handsome guy on the street. If he hadn't been a ridiculously famous superhero and somebody she despised, Lily probably would have been batting her eyelashes at him and trying to get him to ask for her number.

"My what, sorry?"

"Your boyfriend," he clarified. "Not so fond of us?"

"Of course not. Everybody loves you," she said dryly, not even bothering to keep the disdain in her voice from surfacing. "I'm sure my boyfriend would too, if I had one. What exactly did Kenzie tell you about me?" she quickly changed the subject, not wanting to spend the next five minutes discussing Captain Spectacular's likeability.

"Not much; just that you're one of her best friends and that you run a bookshop about five minutes from here, and that you're awfully hard work," he said, with a little twinkle in his eye.

"_I'm_ awfully hard work?" she repeated, highly affronted. "_MçKenzie_ thinks _I'm_ awfully hard work? Has she _looked_ at herself in the mirror lately?"

"Highly strung, I think is how she put it," he said, looking very amused by something. "I wouldn't know, I've only just met you."

"Is that all she told you about me," Lily demanded to know, hands on her hips, all thoughts of fleeing the scene entirely forgotten in the wake of these revelations. "Or do you have any more complimentary notes about Lily to pass on from her?"

"Well, I dunno," he said, shrugging. "She also said you hate my guts."

For a brief moment, pure embarrassment stole over Lily and turned her puce from head to toe, but she shook it off. She was perfectly entitled to hate whomever she wished to hate, and no two-bit celebrity could come after her and try to make her feel bad about it. He had plenty of reason to be hated and she was sure he knew it.

"She said that? She said that I hate you?"

"Yeah," he said. He did not seem to be bothered by this. "Do you?"

"Well I can't say I'm a fan of your work." Lily tossed her hair over her shoulder and lifted her chin daintily into the air. "If that can be construed as hatred."

"Oh, I don't care if you're a fan or not," he explained, waving away that matter. "That's just my job, you don't have to like my job. But, I've sort of got this thing; I guess you could call it a personality flaw -"

"I'm pretty sure you have several of those, actually."

"- That is, when I meet somebody who hates me without knowing me properly I get the strangest urge to actually _get_ to know them and in doing so prove them wrong. Or at least give them ample reason to despise my guts," he added, with a rather sunshiny grin. "Judging on appearances is a bit of a dated practice, don't you think?"

"How very deep of you," she said, with a wry smile, and pressed the elevator button again. "I do really have to go now, though. Some of us actually have to work a nine-to-five job to get along in the world."

"Oh yeah, your bookshop," he said. "I was actually thinking of doing some Christmas shopping there soon. I've got this friend, Remus; he loves books. Can't get enough of them. He'd probably eat a book if you covered it in sauce and put it in a toasted bun."

"Oh, I don't think that would be wise," Lily replied, blatantly pressing the elevator button over and over even though it didn't make one blind bit of difference, and she wasn't really mad at him for holding it open anyway. This strange little conversation was beginning to amuse her in spite of her better judgement. "Think of the calories."

"What's it called?"

"What's what called?"

"Your bookshop."

"Ask Kenzie."

"I'd rather ask you."

"I'd rather not tell you."

"Then how am I going to give you my business this Christmas?" he whined, pouting at her. "Not to mention constantly harass you until you're forced to admit that you find me rather charming and rescind your earlier declarations of hate. Tis the season to be jolly, Lily Evans. Have a heart."

"I have a feeling that this isn't the last I've seen of you, is it?" she said, folding her arms across her chest and giving him a knowing look.

"Probably not, Lily," he agreed, with an easy smile. "I do have a lot of Christmas shopping to do; everyone's asking for books, you run a bookshop, it's conveniently close by..."

"It's called The Yellow Book Road," she interrupted him. "I can't afford your everyday sponsorship fees, I'm sure, but if you're going to come and do your shopping there you better tell everybody you know about it."

"I remember that place!" he said happily. "Do you still have a little corner with toys for children to sit while their parents look around?"

Lily laughed shortly. "Yes."

"And that big chair by the fireplace where that nice man with the sweets used to read stories to the kids every Saturday?"

"That's my father," said Lily amusedly. "He still does it. He used to own the place, actually, but he passed it to me when he retired."

"That's really cool," said James in admiration, his eyes glazing over with what apparently were old memories. "I probably sat next to you when we were children, then. I was down there every Saturday."

"I probably didn't like you then, either."

"Probably not, I was a bit of a brat," he said, with a laugh. "So you don't mind if I stop by some time? Maybe say hello to your dad?"

"Well, no, I don't," she admitted. It would be silly of her to turn away a customer no matter how much she disliked him. "I don't suppose I'd be able to stop you either way, would I?"

"Not at all," he agreed jovially, seeming unfathomably happy with himself for some reason. "Well, for a conversation laced with one-sided dislike on your part and blatant rudeness on mine, I think this has been quite pleasant, Lily Evans."

"It's been interesting, I guess," Lily conceded gracefully. "I'd shake your hand if I hadn't already."

"I'll treasure that first one forever, don't you worry," he assured her. "And I'll see you soon, at your bookshop. I assume there's some sort of discount if you know the owner, right?"

"For you?" she said, with a raise of her eyebrow and a little quirk of her lips. "Not a hope in hell."

He laughed softly, gave her a little salute and let go of the doors; they began to close uninhibited by the big oaf's hands at long last, but just before they closed they were stopped again, this time by Lily, who had smacked the hold button in a sudden fit of inspiration. The doors slid open for the hundredth time and he popped back into Lily's line of vision with his eyebrows raised.

"Can I help you?"

"One question," she said, holding up a finger. "Since you seem so awfully open to the idea of drilling somebody you've only just met, you won't mind, will you?"

"Fire away," he shrugged, hands in his pockets.

"Why Captain Spectacular?"

He blinked several times in quick succession. "Huh?"

"Out of all the possible names you could have picked for yourself when you made the dubious decision to begin a life of crime-fighting -" This was something that had been bothering her ever since the Marauders first made their debut into the public eye. "Why that? Why the gayest name in the world?" she finished innocently, as if she hadn't just grievously insulted him. "Just curious."

"Ah, well, that." He shrugged, smiling at her, and Lily was forced to admit, deep deep down, that James Potter wasn't all that bad when he wasn't posing on a stage in spandex or whatever and pretending to be a hero. "I reckon life's a lot more fun if you can take the piss out of yourself now and then. Don't you?"

"Ah," she said, her fingers searching for that now all-too-familiar button, with a little hint of a smile threatening to make itself known on her face. "Fancy that."

"Bye, Lily."

"Adieu, Captain Pisstake."

He grinned one last big, infectious grin, waved at her as the doors of the elevator did at last close completely, and it was only when she was finally left by herself to travel down to the ground floor did she distinctly hear his laughter ringing in her ears.

She laughed, too.

**A/N: Because I needed something cheerful to counter the utter misery that was chapter two. There was meant to be a Mary scene at the end but it flowed well as one continuous scene without a break and so I'm putting the Mary part in chapter four, where it fits in so much better. Hope you enjoy, guys.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note: I've had some seriously awful stuff going on in my life over the past few days, worse than the normal bad stuff we all have to go through every day, and I've been so emotionally drained and sad that it killed my writing urge for a while. I'm so sorry that you've had to wait for another update; I was really excited about writing and had several more chapters of several more things in the works and now the whole process has been slowed down – I'm gutted.**

**Anyway, here's chapter four for you guys. I'm really enjoying this story and I hope you are, too.**

**CHAPTER FOUR**

Lily didn't know how she would have coped if she didn't have Mary.

Just over a year ago, on a rainy Tuesday evening, she had finished up work and sent a text to her best friend informing her that she was skipping one of her evening classes and coming right home after she picked up some groceries. Several hours later, when she still had not come home and Mary had called her phone several times only to be put through to voicemail, the panicked girl had called the police and reported Lily missing. She still hadn't come home by the next evening, and it sparked a citywide search.

In such a big city where murder, rape and abduction were everyday occurrences, disappearances such as hers were written up in side notes on page sixteen and not spared much attention, and the story of Lily's presumed abduction had stayed well away from the front pages. Her disappearance had, incidentally, coincided with one of the Marauders' trips to Africa to volunteer for the orphanages, a twice-yearly publicity stunt of theirs. Lily wasn't even sure if they had learned of it upon returning.

She had remained missing for over a week, and her family and friends had just started to seriously consider the possibility that her body would soon be found lying in a riverbank somewhere when she turned up out of the blue, none the worse for wear, sporting a tan and claiming to have just come back from Spain. A note informing Mary of this decision to take a sudden holiday was revealed to have fallen behind the fridge, and her fraught loved ones were too relieved and exhausted to question anything she said. Lily was back and she was safe, and that was all that mattered.

Every single person in her life, from her parents to her sister to the nice boy who delivered pizza to her apartment, were under the impression that her terrifying vanishing act of a year ago had been nothing more than an intensely delayed reaction to a bad breakup from her long-term boyfriend. Lily and Brian had met in a drama group as kids and had been a couple since she was eighteen years old and he was twenty. He had been heard talking of engagement and moving in together when Lily unexpectedly dumped him just a week after their three year anniversary. Consumed by guilt over the whole affair, Lily had become distant and thrown herself into work to distract from what she had done to the man who loved her so dearly, but their breakup happened in May and Lily did not go missing until late November, by which time she seemed to have gotten over the trauma and had returned to her normal, happy self. Her excuse for leaving didn't entirely wash, but again, everybody was too relived to have her back to ever question it.

Her parents and friends told themselves that they just had not been aware of the fact that she was secretly still hurting, and the trip to Spain, Lily claimed, had come about after a drunken evening during which she had decided that she just couldn't take the stress any more. She had just needed to get away from it all, she said, and claimed that she had come back from the holiday with some perspective and peace of mind. Still, the vivacious, carefree girl who went to Spain had stayed there, and everybody who knew Lily best knew in their hearts that she had come home missing a little bit of the happiness and sparkle that they thought she had already regained.

Only two people knew what had really happened to Lily when she had gone missing, the same two people who knew that Lily had superhuman powers. Had she been given the choice at the time, Brian wouldn't have been one of them. However, he had just happened to be at her apartment when she had stumbled in the door in the most excruciating physical agony of her life and ran to Mary in tears. He had just happened to hear the story that had spilled from her lips in between loud, choking sobs and her frequent trips to the bathroom in order to vomit, because she just _had_ to tell somebody what she had been through. He had promised to keep it to himself and he was still just devoted enough to her for Lily to believe it, and after enough time passed she had grown to realize that his knowing was a good thing, at times. It gave her an invaluable ally in the police force, which meant that she would never have to openly do what she only wanted to do in secret.

Still, she would reflect from time to time, Brian was not somebody who she still wanted to have in her life. Given the chance again, she only would have told Mary. The rest she could have figured out on her own.

Mary had listened and believed her unquestioningly and kicked Brian out of the apartment when he wouldn't listen to Lily's repeated requests for him to go. Mary had listened to Lily's every request and informed her loved ones of her return in the exact way that Lily had asked her to. Mary had run her a hot bath and stripped her down and bathed her as tenderly as if she were her child. Mary had made her tea and Mary had stroked her hair in front of the television and Mary had slept next to her for weeks afterwards, keeping a tight hold of her hand from the moment Lily got into bed until the moment she woke up in the morning.

Lily strongly believed that Mary had saved her life. Not in any tangible, physical way, but still...

Mary had saved her life.

* * *

"He doesn't know who you are, relax your knickers."

Lily had not seen James Potter since she had met him on the elevator and as luck would have it she had also avoided seeing Captain Spectacular and his gang during any of her vigilante activities, too. She had left the Met News building four days ago feeling lighter at heart than expected and secure in the knowledge that he had absolutely not recognized her, but too much time to think inevitably lead to an over-active imagination gone wild. Now, she was absolutely convinced that not only had Potter recognized her, but he had planned some sort of an elaborate scheme to reveal her true identity at the worst possible moment, perhaps by setting up a mock crime scene and pulling her mask off when she arrived in front of several television cameras and a poised MçKenzie Rhae with her microphone. MçKenzie possibly would have been pissed to learn that Lily was secretly a super-powered crime fighter who had just been hiding it from her.

"You say that now, Mary, but you weren't there," she argued, leaning low over the chess board and moving her rook forward to take her friend's bishop. "Why else would he have chased me down to the elevator if he hadn't known? His excuse didn't wash the longer I thought about it; he's trying to mess with my mind."

It was Friday afternoon and Lily's lunch hour. Mary, who had recently taken over managing the motorbike shop that she had worked at since she was fifteen and now only had to work four days a week instead of five for an increased wage, had taken advantage of the fact that she could pick her own days off and had booked herself an extra-long weekend. Having the whole day off, she had stopped into the bookshop to visit Lily and chat about her friend's experience in the elevator properly, something that they hadn't had much chance to do lately because they had both been so busy. When Lily wasn't working she was off fighting crime, and Mary had been preoccupied with recovering from her fever and making changes at work.

Unfortunately, their chat was to be cut short as the door was pushed open and the old owner of the shop came trudging into the building.

"Who's trying to mess with your mind?" said her father sharply, who was holding three paper cups and bundled up in his downy winter coat. "It's not that Brian again, is it? I thought you'd cut all contact with him?"

Lily's father had never approved of Brian, whom he had thought to be clingy, manipulative, and far too soft for his daughter. As it happened, he had been absolutely right.

"Nice accusin', Mr Evans," said Mary with a laugh, as she moved one of her knights forward and sandwiched two of Lily's pawns into an impossible situation. "And you're barely even in the door yet, new record."

"It's not Brian, dad," said Lily with a roll of her eyes, as her father came over to the counter they were standing at and put down the cup holder. "I hardly see him any more."

"He's too much of a boring turd to mess with anybody's mind, anyway," put in Mary, picking up her cup and bringing it to her lips. Brian had, indeed, been impossibly boring, and Lily had spent the latter part of their relationship a very miserable young woman. "I heard he tried to think once and his head blew a gasket."

"He never was good enough for you," said Mr Evans to his daughter, pulling her into a one-armed hug and kissing the side of her head. "Who's this man you're talking about, then? Anyone I need to beat up?"

"One of the suppliers," Lily lied, with a soft laugh, as her father ruffled her hair. "One of those idiots at Hispaniola Books is trying to convince me that I have a back-order unpaid, which is complete bollocks. I ran over all of the orders with Samantha at least twenty times."

"Ah, the life of a boss is a vale of tears." Mr Evans picked up his own cup of hot chocolate and took a sip. "How're things at the motorbike shop, Mary?"

"Oh, you know," said Mary, with a shrug. "Incredibly... vroomy."

"Mary got the uniforms abolished," said Lily, with another laugh. "Her first week running the place and she has the entire staff working in their own clothes."

"It boosted morale," said Mary simply, and glanced around at the other employees in the bookshop. "You wouldn't have your staff work in gaudy, itchy polo necks and suit trousers, would you?"

Lily's bookshop was an old, pretty, magical kind of place and an institution of the city. Three storeys high and just small enough to be intimate, it was warm and cosy and a popular destination for people doing their Christmas shopping, which meant that the next month was sure to be busy. The top two floors consisted solely of books and several squishy armchairs, for Lily's father had long since found that people were more likely to spend money if they were allowed to sit down and sample the books first, and when Lily had taken over she had not done away with that tradition. The bottom floor, where the cash registers were arranged on a large, circular wooden counter in the centre of the room, also had a corner with several toys and an employee whose job it was to watch the children who were deposited there by their parents as they trawled the shop for books. There was an armchair sat next to a gorgeous old fireplace where Lily's father would come in on Saturdays and read to the children's book club, and in another corner a space had been cleared for the coffee bar that was to be installed on Monday morning. Lily and Mary were standing at the counter playing chess, having decided not to bother retiring to the break room because the shop wasn't particularly busy yet and the blazing fire was lovely and comfortable.

"True," said Lily lightly, sipping her own hot chocolate. "Mum's coat is in the back, if you want to go and get it."

"Oh," said her father, looking from girl to girl, comprehension dawning. "Private chat? I see when I'm not wanted."

"Just another five minutes, dad," said Lily sweetly. "We'll be done with our girl talk then."

Lily's father gave a good-natured little chuckle. "Don't mind me, I'll grab Grace's coat and be off in a jiff."

"You're so cruel to your father," said Mary, as Mr Evans gave her a wink and set off towards the back room. "After he brings us hot chocolate and everything, you coldly order him away. Tsk."

"I didn't _order_ anyone away," Lily protested, with a little pout.

"Aww, what's the matter, Lilypilly?" Mary wriggled her eyebrows and gave a little smirk. "Don't want to tell him about your new boyfriend?"

"He's not my boyfriend!" Lily squeaked, very nearly spilling her hot chocolate in her haste to stress this point, much to the surprise of one of her employees who was stacking biographies nearby. "Stop calling him that, would you?" She scoffed quietly. "You and your bloody theories."

"It's not a theory, he does fancy you," said Mary sternly. "He told MçKenzie as much right after he met you, he even texted her asking if you'd mentioned him to her since. She forwarded the text to my _phone_, Lily."

"It's all an act; all part of his plan to expose me."

"Expose your naked body in the privacy of his secret lair, maybe. He _punctuates_!" Mary waved her phone in Lily's face but Lily refused to look at it, just as she had been doing ever since Mary had gotten Kenzie's damn text message. "No text speak! He can _spell_! He can construct proper sentences!"

"That boy can have any woman in the city he likes," Lily argued, as if text speak wasn't one of her pet peeves and as if she wasn't going red in the face at all. "I hardly doubt he'd feel any burning passion for _me_, especially since he knows I'm not fond of him. Besides," she added. "He was far too modest when I met him, nothing like I know him to be."

"Because you know him so _very_ well," said Mary dryly, with a roll of her eyes. "You two go way back; this sudden change in character is totally unprecedented and definitely a sign of something sinister."

"That's exactly right, Mary." She took another sip of her hot chocolate and, resuming the long forgotten chess game, moved one of her pawns away from certain death. "Plain and simple."

"He couldn't possibly be playing a character in public and genuine in person, could he?"

"Nope."

"You're so full of it."

"Yup."

"You quite fancy him yourself, don't you?"

Lily did not answer in words, but with a very pronounced glare. "Watch it."

"Eddie thinks you do."

Lily, who had just been picking up her paper cup for another mouthful, dropped it back down onto the counter and gaped at Mary, just as her father came back into the shop from the break room. "You told _Eddie_?"

"Ah, Eddie," said Mr Evans, coming to a stop beside Mary and ruffing her hair just as he had done to Lily. "How _is_ that boyfriend of yours, MacDonald?"

Mary responded by holding up her left hand and wriggling her ring finger, whereupon she wore a gorgeous platinum ring with one square shaped diamond in the middle. "1.5 carats, you know."

"Mary MacDonald!" Lily's father gasped delightedly, pushing his glasses up his nose so that he could properly examine Mary's engagement ring. "That looks expensive!"

"I _know_," said Mary gleefully, her eyes glittering as she eyed her own ring. "His mother told him to get it engraved, but I told him I wouldn't wear it if he did, it's such a wanky suggestion."

"Ever the romantic, is Mary," Lily sighed, making two of her chess pieces kiss one another.

"How long ago did this happen?" her father asked.

"Two months." Mary beamed. "But for the love of God, _don't_ call him my fiancé, it makes us sound so old and grown up and I'm not even _thinking_ about setting a date yet."

"I'll have to tell Grace," said Mr Evans, whipping out his phone and beginning to tap out a text message. Mary and Lily had been friends for so long that Lily's parents considered her to be a third daughter, and vice versa with Mary's parents. "She'll want to have you both over for dinner."

"Oh, that'd be lovely!" said Mary cheerfully. Eddie also loved Lily's parents. "Maybe Lily could bring her new -"

"_Mary_!" Lily hissed.

"Oh _my_," said Mary, her eyes suddenly fixed upon the door.

Lily's father looked from Mary to Lily in confusion, and probably would have asked Mary to finish what she was saying if he had not been interrupted just then by the sound of the shop bell and the entrance of the very person whom Mary had been about to drag back into the conversation.

"Well, hey there!" said Mary loudly.

Lily nearly fell through the floor with embarrassment.

He had come alone, and unlike when he had come into MçKenzie's building, had obviously not happened across people to talk to along the way, which was why Lily hadn't picked up on his voice before he had got there. Again, he was dressed in regular clothes, sans the heavy coat that the rest of the world were bundled up in to protect from the freezing December cold because, much like Lily (she assumed, at least), his body was resilient to changes in temperature. Unlike Lily, however, he had no reason to hide this fact.

It was amazing, really, how much difference a change in outfit made to a person's attractiveness.

"Uh, hi," said James Potter, waving awkwardly at Mary and trying not to look too surprised by the way she had greeted him. Lily rubbed the spot between her eyebrows with her finger and tried to make him vanish by using the power of thought. Unfortunately, that wasn't within her abilities.

"Don't be shy, now, come on over!" Mary sang, bouncing over to the door and taking him firmly by the elbow. She lead him over to the counter where Lily was blushing herself into an oblivion and Lily's father was surveying the scene in confusion. "You're James, aren't you? I'm Mary, Lily's best friend. We live together. She told me _all_ about you and I must say she was right when she said you look _far_ better when you're not wearing those superhero clothes. It's Captain Spectacular, Mr E," she added, looking at Lily's father and pointing at Potter's stomach, with a grin. "In the flesh."

"Oh, _that's_ where I recognized you from!" said Mr Evans, holding out his hand for James to shake and not even bothering to ask Mary why this was all happening. Perhaps he had gotten too used to Mary and her crazy behaviour. "James, is it? Andrew Evans, Lily's father. We've met before, not too long ago, in fact."

"Oh, oh yeah, I remember," said James politely, shaking her father's hand, while Lily looked on and died a little inside. "Your neighbour's cat was stuck in one of your trees, right?"

"You rescue cats?" said Lily incredulously, but not cruelly, and laughed in spite of herself, having been successfully surprised out of her stony silence. James looked at her and went slightly pink in the face, but gave her a smile nonetheless.

She felt an odd little flutter in her stomach.

"Cats have feelings too, you know," he said. "And I got a lovely slice of sponge cake for my efforts."

"Ah," said Lily's father, while Lily tried to hide her smile, his eyes glazing over with fond memories. "Mrs King makes the best cakes. You should try her mince pies, actually. You're a friend of Lily's, aren't you? You should come to the house with her someday soon and try -"

"He's not a friend!" Lily piped up, suddenly anxious. One or two of her staff members were gazing at James with wide eyes, clearly bamboozled by the fact that Captain Spectacular had just wandered into the shop for a visit. "I met him the other day at Kenzie's office and he just wanted to know a good place to buy books in the area, so I told him to come here."

"Yeah, exactly," James agreed, with a laugh, much to her surprise and gratitude. "She told me all about it, really made the place sound great. She offered me a discount, too, actually, because I'm planning on buying so much."

Liar, her mind amended. Liar. Filthy, filthy liar.

"She's got a shrewd business mind, like her dad," said Lily's father, smiling down at his daughter while she fumed silently because she couldn't very well say that she hadn't offered him a discount now, lest her father get confused and assume they were secretly dating, or something. "What exactly are you looking for?"

"Now now, Mr Evans," said Mary, wagging her finger and giving Lily a significant, albeit amused, look. "I do believe it's Lily's job to serve the nice superhero?"

"Oh, of course." Mr Evans shook his head and looked apologetically around at the group. "Old habits. My daughter owns the business now that I've retired, you know," he told James, his voice swelling with pride. "And I dare say she does a better job of it than I ever did."

"Yeah, I'd imagine she does," said Potter, as he gave Lily another smile, which made her stomach act up a little again. How _was_ he doing that? Was it one of his lesser known powers? "She gives off that impression."

"So that's the only reason you're here, _James_?" said Mary, giving Potter a searching look as she tapped the side of her paper cup with her fingernails. "Just shopping for books, was it?"

"Er…" James gave Mr Evans a sideways glance and nodded at Mary, his voice tight. "That's pretty much it, yeah."

"No other reason you can think of, no?"

"Not off the top of my head."

"Because, you know," Mary continued, not minding the fact that Lily's father was still standing there and anything she might have said could have caused Lily extreme embarrassment. "I was talking to MçKenzie Rhae the other day and she said something about -"

"You know, I think my break's over," Lily cut in hurriedly, taking hold of Potter's arm as she stepped out from behind the counter, and leading him away from Mary and her father. "You wanted to look for books, didn't you? For that friend of yours who likes them in toasted buns? Perhaps I can show you around and you can pick out what you think will do."

"Well, er, let's see," said Potter, throwing a cautionary glance over his shoulder. "He likes manga, if you've got any of that."

"Toasted buns?" said Mr Evans, who had _definitely _heard the wrong part of that conversation, and to her dismay he made to follow them both, with Mary close behind. "What on earth does -"

"_There_ you are, Potter!"

For the third time that day, all conversation was brought to a halt by the sound of the shop bell jingling and the arrival of yet another new person to the fray, although in this case, it was someone whom Lily had never seen before in her life. Also in this case, this person hadn't opened the door so much as flung it open with a vengeance.

"Shit," murmured James, throwing his eyes up to heaven and looking very much as if he had just been caught sneaking out by his mum, as the person whom had just smashed into the shop began to march towards the two of them and glared at a stand of greeting cards that had the audacity to stand in her path. "Izzie."

The aforementioned Izzie was a teeny tiny and outrageously pretty Asian girl who was dressed entirely in figure-hugging black, looked no older than eighteen and had a terribly girlish voice, yet her expression and entire demeanour immediately gave the impression of a person who absolutely was not to be messed with. Even Potter, who probably could have picked her up and flung her a hundred feet with one hand without breaking a sweat, seemed to shrink back in fear as she came sashaying over, mobile phone in one hand and strongly smelling coffee in the other.

"I _told_ you to stop running away like this when we have appointments, JimJams," she said menacingly, as she came to a halt in front of them, waving her phone at Potter as if she were threatening him with a gun. "I had to cancel a manicure to get here, you little shit."

"How'd you know I was here?" he asked her, frowning down at the tiny girl as if he dearly wanted to stomp her into the ground. "I sure as hell didn't tell you where I was going."

"Sirius," she said, her voice laced with acidic sweetness, and then looked at Lily, her eyes immediately lighting up at the sight of her. "Is this her?"

Potter gave a short nod. "For Christ's sake, Izzie, I told you not to interfe -"

"Fabulous. Hold my crap," said Izzie, stuffing the phone and the coffee into Potter's hands and extending her own towards Lily. "Lily Evans, is it? Izzie Santos, I'm the Marauders' publicist. I've heard so much about you that I just _had_ to see you for myself."

"Um," said Lily, taking Izzie's hand and shaking it. "Nice to meet you?"

"Oh, you as well. JimJams, you were right, she's so _pretty_," Izzie sighed, looking Lily up and down and beaming at her. "And _ginger_. I'm so fucking jealous like you wouldn't believe." She indicated her own raven black hair and clucked impatiently. "I've always wanted to be ginger."

"Oh, well, thank you," said Lily, still entirely confused, briefly touching her own hair. "I guess I've always liked it."

"Of course you do, it's gorgeous." Dropping Lily's hand, Izzie turned to Mary and Lily's father and beamed again. "I hope I didn't interrupt anything important, but James here had an appointment with me that he didn't turn up to and I do worry, you know? He's so dear to me," she sighed once more, turning momentarily to throw James an irritated glare. "Aren't you, you bastard?"

"Like family, Izz," said James in monotone, still holding her phone and coffee.

"I'm Mary MacDonald," said Mary, springing forward to grab Izzie's hand and pump it enthusiastically up and down. "I know we've only just met, but I love you."

"Oh, everyone does," said Izzie airily, and smiled at Lily's father as he approached her. "And you are?"

"Andrew Evans," said her father dazedly as he also shook her hand. "Lily's father."

"Lovely to meet you, Andrew!" Izzie chirped, practically sparkling with self-importance. "Would you believe it, I'm actually here to see your daughter about something."

"You are?" said Lily, blinking in surprise.

"You are?" said Mary, sounding very much amused.

"Shit," muttered James under his breath, so quietly that only Lily could hear him.

"I am," Izzie confirmed, turning back to Lily, her eyes glittering with some kind of wickedness. "As you might know, I'm the person who's solely responsible for coming up with the Marauders' public image, and for managing all of their public events. Isn't that great?"

"I already told you," said James, through severely gritted teeth. "As did Kenzie; telling her that you're responsible for us won't endear you to her, Izzie. Lily doesn't _like_ us."

"Pfft. Whatever," said Izzie, waving the matter away. "Any strong reaction is a good reaction, even if it's a bad one."

"Well, I don't know about that," said Lily quietly, and through her haze of confusion. She was completely flabbergasted by the whole situation. "Surely it'd be better if -"

"It just so happens that _you_, darling, are exactly what I've been looking for," Izzie interrupted her without thought, holding her hand out for her coffee. James handed it to her with a grunt and Izzie took a mouthful before continuing. "This whole spiel of four untouchable boys has gotten old, you see. The gay rumours have started to die down and there's been a decrease in the amount of fan fiction splashed all over the internet. I need a new angle to keep things _fresh_, you know?" she added, looking at Mary, who nodded as if Izzie had made herself perfectly clear and wasn't actually rambling on about nonsense, which Lily very much thought she was.

"I beg your pardon?" said Lily politely, glancing sideways at Potter, who looked as if he had been lead to the gallows. "I don't really understand what you're trying to say."

"Well the thing is, Lily, the only Marauder who actually has a steady girlfriend is Peter and she's so dreadfully dog ugly that I can hardly release photos of them to the public, can I?" Izzie carried on, handing her coffee back to Potter, who took it with another grunt. "You, on the other hand..."

She stepped away from the two of them and observed them both in silence for a few moments, tapping her finger against her chin.

"Perfect," she eventually concluded, motioning for more coffee. "Totally perfect. You look _gorgeous_ together. James is the most popular member so it'd only make sense to market him as the one with the girlfriend."

"Excuse me," said Lily quickly, while Mary started to laugh, suddenly beginning to comprehend what Izzie was actually talking about. "Girlfriend?"

"I could have picked somebody famous, of course, but I think it works better that you're just an ordinary girl, you know? The boys will seem even more accessible to the public because girls will actually _think_ that they're in with a chance."

"Izzie," said Potter urgently. "You're talking out of your arse."

"Some of his fans might want to hate you but now that I've seen you I'm fairly confident that you'll come across well as a couple who people want to root for."

"Seriously," said Potter to Lily. "Don't listen to her, she hasn't a clue what she's talking about."

"All I need to do is have the two of you photographed somewhere on a date," Izzie concluded, with a bright, breezy smile, and held out her hand towards James again. "Phone, Potter. Lily, honey, how are you fixed for next Saturday night?"

"I'm sorry," said Lily, now quite unable to believe her ears. "What?"

"For your date, of course," said Izzie, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "_Phone_, Potter."

"This is the first I've heard about a date, Lily," said her father, frowning at Izzie's back.

"It's the first I've heard about one either," Lily assured him hurriedly, and looked up at Potter. "What the hell is going on?"

"Wait a second," said Izzie, suddenly standing stock still and looking at Potter as if he had done a particularly nasty fart. "Haven't you asked her out yet?"

"No," he said, sounding sulky as he gave her back her phone. "And I wasn't planning on it."

"Useless," said Izzie, flipping her phone open. "Utterly useless. Anyway, James, you've got Saturday night off so you can take Lily out to a musical or something. Do you like _Cats_?" she added, giving Lily a questioning look. "_Les Miserables_? _Chicago_?"

"Um, I'm not entirely sure that I want to be used by the two of you as a publicity stunt, thanks," said Lily, who was a little bit peeved by the whole situation. If Potter had come in here in order to butter her up so that his crazy publicist could set them up on a date, thus furthering whatever plan he had to expose her identity and laugh at her, she wasn't going to take it lying down. "In fact, I _am_ entirely sure. I'm not interested."

"And I'm not entirely sure that I want to take a girl out as a publicity stunt either," said Potter stoically. Izzie merely rolled her eyes at them both.

"You've never objected to any of my suggestions before," she informed him.

"You've never dragged an outsider into one of your plans, either," he pointed out.

"What's the harm?" Izzie shrugged her shoulders and looked to Mary for assistance, as Mary did not seem to be seeing the problem in this situation, either, but was looking at Lily as if imploring her to say yes. "It's one night out, all expenses paid, you both get to enjoy yourself and it'll be good publicity for the shop! You can always use the publicity coming up to Christmas."

"The shop's an institution as it is, we don't need the publicity," said Lily coldly, ignoring Mary's pleading eyes. "I'm not getting into a relationship with somebody I hardly know to further a campaign that I think is bloody ridiculous to begin with."

"I'm not asking you to get into a _relationship_ with him," said Izzie, with a heavy and irritated sigh. "Just one date; If it doesn't work out you can fade back into obscurity and if it does work out you can thank me at the wedding."

Lily snorted with laughter. "Believe me, the day I marry _that_ camera hungry mongrel is the day I lose my mind completely."

"Hey!" Potter turned to her in consternation. "I didn't know she was going to do this!"

"You don't exactly seem to _mind_ the glare of the spotlight when you're being plastered all over the telly," Lily retorted, because she highly doubted his innocence in the matter. "This modest act you're pulling is a little bit suspicious, don't you think?"

"Oh James," said Izzie fondly, shaking her head and laughing softly. "You're so utterly shit with women."

"Believe me," said Potter levelly. "I'd never ask anybody to get dragged into what I do for a living."

"But you were coming here to ask me."

"No," he said. "I wasn't."

"Because I can't exactly say I don't like your image if I make myself a part of it, not without looking like a hypocrite, anyway, and you have a deep-set need to be loved by everyone, right?"

"No!" he insisted again. "Where are you _getting_ this nonsense?"

"God, Lily," said Izzie, who was still laughing at her frustrated client. "I don't think he can think deeply enough to come up with something like that."

"Oh really?" Lily put her hands on her hips and glared, first at Izzie and then at James. "So why exactly did you pick me for this little girlfriend experiment?"

"Well, _duh_." Izzie mimicked Lily's stance and tossed her hair over her shoulder. "He fancies you."

There was a silence, during which time Mr Evans' eyebrows shot up towards his hairline and Mary muttered 'I told you so' under her breath. James Potter, in the meantime, had begun to blush like a fire engine.

"Great," he said, running a hand through his hair. "Great, Izzie, thanks."

"I'm only trying to be a good _friend_, James," she said, rolling her eyes, and gave Lily a big smile. "He hasn't been able to shut up about you since Monday and from what he said it seemed like you had chemistry. The poor bugger hasn't been on a date in over a year and from what MçKenzie said about you, well, it seems like you haven't either."

"That's true," said her father helpfully, much to Lily's utter shock. Surely he was the one person who didn't want her to go out on dates? "We've been wondering when she was going to get back into dating after she broke up with her ex, it's been an awfully long time."

"Aww, honey," said Izzie sympathetically, taking Lily's hand in her own and petting it. "Broke your heart, did he?"

"No," said Mary, stifling her giggles. "She broke his."

"Oh really?" Izzie looked at Mary and grinned. "Bastard, was he?"

"Boring bastard," Mary amended, grinning back. "They had about as much chemistry as a wet mop."

"Cheers, Mary," said Lily dully. "Cheers."

"You know, this really isn't a conversation that I think I should be here for," said her unhelpful father, waving awkwardly at Lily as he backed towards the door. "In any case, I need to get back to your mother before she sends out a search party. It was nice seeing you all!"

"Dad!" Lily stared after her father in shock. "Don't abandon me now!"

"Go, Mr E," said Mary, waving him away. "I'll fill you in on everything later."

"Lovely to meet you again, Mr Evans!" Izzie waved but did not look at him and her father shrugged apologetically.

"Call me later!" he cried, and practically dashed out of the door. Lily could see his shoulders begin to shake with laughter through the glass as soon as it closed behind him.

"I honestly have no idea what's going on here," she said, looking from person to person. "But the idea of getting dressed up and dragged all over town whilst I get hounded by photographers and labelled for the rest of my life as Captain Spectacular's girlfriend is _not_ a pleasant one. Am I right or not?" she added, looking to her best friend for comfort.

Mary blinked.

"I reckon you should go, darling," said she said helpfully, and shrugged. "It can't hurt."

"No, it can't!" said Izzie brightly, jumping on Mary's bandwagon. "Honestly, Lily, he's not the fiendish oaf you make him out to be, just hopeless with girls."

James groaned loudly. "Fucking hell."

"You really don't get it," Lily ploughed on determinedly. "I don't _like_ the attention, I just want to -"

"She'll go," said Mary determinedly, to which Izzie gave a little squeal of delight. "I'll convince her to do it, and _Chicago_ is her favourite musical so you should get tickets to that."

"Mary!" Lily snarled. "I will not go!"

"What if I don't go?" said James, to which Izzie's delighted squeal became a growl.

"Shut up, both of you. Especially you, James, or whatever you name is. I'm doing you a favour," said Mary, glancing over Izzie's shoulder at whatever she was typing into her phone. "If you're going to get them a table somewhere she doesn't like Indian food."

"Too gassy," Izzie agreed, tapping away at her touch screen. "I know a great little fusion place that they could go to, actually."

"Ooh!" said Mary. "My boyfriend and I actually went to a fusion place the other day, and I thought..."

Unwilling to hear any more of their ridiculous chit-chat, Lily grabbed hold of Potter's arm again and pulled him towards the back of the shop, towards the manga section that she had been originally intent upon taking him to in order to avoid embarrassment. He came along willingly, still bright red and silent, and it was only when they were out of earshot of the two interfering girls that Lily let go of his arm and turned on him, her hands finding her hips again.

"I don't find any of this remotely amusing, you know," she said, staring him down. If he wanted to reveal he knew her secret, he was going to do it now and not at a bloody musical. She would not suffer any public humiliation at the hands of Captain Spectacular.

"I know," he said, having the good grace to look very ashamed. "Neither do I."

"I don't let people mess around with me," she carried on, just waiting for the inevitable moment that he would change demeanour and shoot her that stupid grin of his, and reveal that he knew who she was all along. She still hadn't ruled out being pied in the face, either. Lemon Meringue Lily was still a definite possibility.

"I'm not trying to mess around with you," he said.

"So… if you have something to say to me," she began awkwardly, wondering how best to phrase this just in case he actually didn't know of her double life and she had been missing the point all along. "Now would be a good time to say it."

"I'm... sorry about Izzie, she's a crazy lunatic who I never should have told about you?" he said, looking confused. "In all fairness I shouldn't find her so scary, but I can't exactly punch her into an oblivion, can I?"

Lily gazed blankly up at him. This was not what she had been getting at, not at all. "What?"

"I'm... sorry if you think I'm a stalker, maybe?"

Lily blinked. "Why would I think you were a stalker?"

"Well, I dunno." Now he was looking at her as if she was the loony one. "Maybe because I chased after you on an elevator and came to your work just to see you with a really flimsy excuse about buying books for my friend? Although he really does like manga," he added, quickly scanning the shelf that they were standing in front of. "What's _Ouran High School Host Club_?"

"It's my favourite thing in the world," said Lily, as Potter pulled out one of the later volumes and opened it. "You should read it."

He laughed at her as he began to flick through the pages. "You're doing that salesman thing where you recommend something you've never actually tried, aren't you?"

"I probably would have, if you hadn't singled out my favourite manga, yeah," she admitted shamelessly. "But as luck would have it, you did. It's amazing, really. Read it."

"If you say so," he said in amusement, holding open a page and showing it to her. "Who's that handsome devil? The one with the black hair and glasses."

Lily laughed quietly; the character he had picked out looked rather like him, had he been a character in a manga and not a very real person. "That's Kyouya, he's an evil mastermind who's not actually evil, just really egotistical, one of those people who never embarrasses himself and always sorts your shit out without breaking a sweat. But with a heart of gold underneath it all," she added. "He's my favourite."

"Mine too," said Potter, even though he had absolutely no way of telling what the other characters were like. "It's like me, if I actually were as cool as I pretend to be, and not a total moron."

Lily actually did laugh loudly at that one; pulled out the first volume and handed it to him.

"Here," she said. "That's number one, you read it from the back. There are instructions in there if you really are so dense that you can't follow it."

"I'll get Remus to give me a crash course," he promised, putting the later volume he had first taken back onto the shelf. "A poor girl at a rich kids' school ends up working for the school's swankiest club and gets mistaken for a boy, huh?"

"Believe me," said Lily dryly. "It'll change your life. You'll want Tamaki and Haruhi to get together, see if you don't."

"So I take it that you're a bit of a romantic at heart," he said, tapping the book against his chest. "Are you?"

"In fiction, not in real life," she said. "It's less messy that way, and boys are boring."

"Ouch," said Potter, looking wounded. "I'm going to have to try hard with you, aren't I?"

"Try hard?" Lily giggled, amused by the look on Potter's face. "Why?"

"Well, come on, Evans," he said, with a rather bashful little grin. "Weren't you listening to what I said just a minute ago?"

"Yes," she said tentatively, kind of knowing what he was getting at already but not wanting to say so in case she was wrong, and therefore ended up embarrassing herself for the millionth time that day. "But you didn't exactly make yourself clear on the matter. Why else did you come here, if not to buy books?"

"Because," he said, turning away from her and strolling back to the register. "I do fancy you, you ditz."

"Oh really?" she said, addressing his retreating back and feeling extremely thankful that he couldn't see her face because she was blushing redder than a tomato or a fire engine or any red thing that had ever existed on the face of the planet. "So, in spite of the fact that I think Captain Spectacular is a waster and I'm not remotely interested, you're going to try winning me over, yeah?"

"Something like that," he said, as he disappeared from view and Lily sank against one of the bookshelves. "See you Saturday."

**A/N: Here's a little fact. MçKenzie, Mary and Izzie are actually based pretty strongly on three of my very best friends, whose names are McKenzie (without the ç, but still sexy as hell), Leonie and, um, Izzie, and the three of them are even more amazing than they are in this story. Brian is based on an idiot boy I know who pretty much acts exactly like that, and the rapist from chapter two is named after two of my ex-boyfriends, both of whom were total creeps, particularly the one whose first name I borrowed. I only got permission from the aforementioned three best friends to do this, which I guess must make me a horrible person, right?**

**And also, Lily is right, you _should_ read/watch _Ouran High School Host Club_ because it's the best fandom to ever exist.  
**


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note: I think writing my real life friends into this story has spurred me on because as soon as I finished chapter four I had to start another in spite of how crap things are for me right now. This'll be the last onslaught of new characters that you'll have to suffer through, I think, and some of these are even recognizable from canon, so bear with me?**

**CHAPTER FIVE**

"I hate you for making me do this," Lily muttered.

"You're going to have a fabulous time," said MçKenzie Rhae, not bothering to keep her voice down as they walked into the extravagant looking restaurant. "Stop complaining and look a bit perkier."

It was Friday night, and Lily, MçKenzie, Mary and her boyfriend Eddie had just arrived at Ciao Bella, one of the more exclusive Italian restaurants in the city, to attend a dinner that had been thrown in honour of Bellatrix Black. The link between the entitled socialite's name and the name of the restaurant was no coincidence; the guest of honour had chosen the place herself for that specific purpose, filled the kitchen with her own personal selection of chefs for the night, and even though only one large table was needed for the guests, the entire restaurant had been booked out for the entire evening. The perks of being young, rich and beautiful in this city seemed to be infinite and ridiculous.

Lily had arrived home from work after what had been a confusing day of non-existent back orders, psychopathic publicists and frighteningly endearing superheroes whom she had sworn once upon a time to hate for all eternity to find Mary and MçKenzie waiting in her bedroom for her, wearing identical, evil smiles and surrounded by a battalion of cosmetics and clothes. Without warning, they had sprung, forcing Lily into an indecently tight, dark blue cocktail dress that was lacking much fabric at the back, styling her hair and covering her face in a cloud of make-up. They had callously ignored her protests of exhaustion and Lily was unable to argue that she wanted to listen out for cries of help that night because both Kenzie and Eddie were in the apartment to overhear, and so all she could do was agree to be bundled into a limousine and brought to the dinner she had wanted so badly to avoid.

"I look like an idiot in this suit," Eddie was saying, scowling darkly as Mary lead him through the doorway by the hand, like a mother leading a petulant child.

"You always look like an idiot," Mary retorted, as she smiled and waved to somebody she knew. "At least now you look like an idiot with a stylist."

Eddie rolled his eyes and gave Lily a very droll smile, to which she winced in sympathy; he was her one ally in this situation and not a very useful one at that. Edgar Bones was one of those fortunate boyfriends who seemed to have mastered the knack of appearing to be under the thumb whilst somehow managing to get everything he wanted from his relationship. Mary had solemnly sworn on many occasions that she would never hold hands in public, never tell a boyfriend she loved him and never _ever_ get engaged, and so far Eddie had succeeded in getting her to do all three without so much as lifting a finger. If this meant that Eddie would sometimes have to allow his girlfriend to bully him and force him to attend ridiculous events that he secretly loathed, he happily went along with it without complaining. Lily could hardly have expected him to object to going to Bellatrix Black's dinner party with the rest of them, and therefore she had not a leg to stand on.

"Who else is coming to this thing, anyway?" said Lily to Kenzie, while Eddie moaned to Mary about the suit once more, presumably to irritate her for fun like he normally did. "A large group of pathetically adoring fans?"

"Stop with your sarcasm," said Kenzie, pinching Lily's arm. "Only one of her sisters can come because Narcissa is in Venezuela, but Andie will be here and she's bringing Amos Diggory."

"Amos Diggory," Lily repeated. His name sounded vaguely familiar to her, probably because Kenzie had told her about him before. Kenzie did love her celebrity gossip. "Didn't he and Andie get drunkenly married in Las Vegas or something? Or is he a photographer?"

"Both," said Kenzie, taking off her shrug to reveal her trademark little red dress and envy-inspiring curves. Lily felt quite inadequate next to her. "They met on one of her modelling jobs and got married after a whirlwind two week romance. Apparently he's like a living Disney prince or something, and really fucking stupid, but he absolutely worships her."

"You talk like a living tabloid magazine, Kenzie."

"Mitchell Mulciber is coming, of course," MçKenzie continued, and Lily knew from previous conversations, and from having met Bellatrix Black herself, that Mitchell Mulciber was the guest of honour's long-term, on-again-off-again boyfriend, and that Bellatrix had once gotten a journalist fired for misspelling his name as 'Mitchwell' in a society page write-up. "Regulus is home from college for the weekend too, so I'm sure he'll be here somewhere."

"I haven't met Regulus," said Lily quietly, peering around the ballroom at the assembled guests. She could see Bellatrix's sister Andie, who unlike her older sister was one of the loveliest people Lily knew, sitting at the table already and purring into the ear of a tall, broad shouldered young man who she could only presume to be her husband Amos, and near to them a pretty, blonde haired young man who she thought might have been Barty Crouch Jnr. "Is that Barty Crouch over there?"

"Well, obviously!" MçKenzie motioned excitedly for the blonde boy to come over to them. "He and Regulus are dating, didn't you know?"

"Oh. No, I didn't," said Lily dryly, as the blonde bounced his way over to the two of them, holding a bunch of sparkly gift bags and brimming with unfathomable energy. "How out of character for me."

"Kenzie!" cried Barty Crouch Jnr, springing at MçKenzie and pulling her into a tight hug. There was something quite childlike about him, in spite of the fact that he must have been about twenty. "You're here, hurray! I've got gift bags for everyone!"

"Eek! Barty darling!" Kenzie excitedly took two of the bags from Barty and handed one to Lily, who allowed curiosity to get the better of her and peeked inside. She spied several cosmetics, a packaged muffin and a photograph of Bellatrix Black, all of which were covered in a suffocating amount of glitter. Her brain exploded. "This is my friend, Lily Evans; she's my date for the night. Isn't she pretty?"

"Very pretty!" sang Barty happily as he also pulled Lily into a tight, cuddly hug. "You've got such lovely hair, is that your natural colour?"

"Um, well, yes," said Lily, whose hair was a shade of red that couldn't have come out of a bottle in a million years – it was obviously her natural colour. "Yes, it is."

"It's so lovely," he said, touching a strand. "You're going to sit near me and Reg at dinner, aren't you, Kenzie? Bella said you could, she let me do out the placement, it's all in glitter. Do you want to see?"

"Oooh, so fancy!" Kenzie was so easily excited by things like elegant parties and placements, it boggled Lily's mind. "Who's Lily sitting next to?"

"Oh, well let me think," said Barty thoughtfully, tapping his chin with his finger. "I can't really remember, but I think I have her sitting next to..."

"Whatever, cousin." A smooth, silky voice from behind Lily's back, deep for a woman but still undeniably feminine, announced the arrival of Bellatrix Black, who had just entered the room. "So you're a superhero, la di da, _you_ couldn't shift so many copies of _Vogue_ magazine that they'd needed to do three reprints."

"I forgot to congratulate you for that," came another voice, also smooth and silky, but this time most decidedly male. "There must be a lot of people out there with dog mess to clean up."

"A valiant effort at humour, Sirius," said Bellatrix, just as Lily and Kenzie both swung around to be greeted by the sight of their host for the evening, and walking alongside her - her cousin, Sirius, also known one fourth of the idiotic Marauders. Lily's stomach immediately began churning; there went any chance of a pleasant evening. "It falls terribly flat, however. MçKenzie, darling, there you are, and stunning, as always."

"Bella, my love." Kenzie leaned forward and she and Bellatrix did the typical exchange of kisses to the cheek. "You look absolutely ravishing."

Lily didn't like to admit it, but it was true, in her slinky black dress with its dangerously plunging neckline, Bellatrix Black _did_ look absolutely ravishing. In fact, the only other person in the room who could have touched her for beauty was her younger sister, who had opted to dress in dazzling white for the evening, a move that Lily was sure had been carefully planned by the sisters earlier on. Sirius Black was handsome, too, and devastatingly so, but not the type of man whom Lily found to be particularly attractive in general. He seemed generally uninterested in everything that was going on around him, though, so at least Lily could sympathise with him there.

"And Lily Evans," said Bellatrix sweetly, also leaning in to kiss Lily on the cheek. Lily wasn't overly fond of Bellatrix but in spite of this fact, Bellatrix seemed to be quite fond of her. According to Kenzie, the model found Lily's veiled dislike of her quite amusing. "You get prettier and prettier every time I see you, and your hair is _so_ very lovely."

"Lily Evans?" said Sirius all of a sudden, and even under his mass of smooth black hair his ears seemed to prick up like a dog's. "_You're_ Lily Evans?"

"Black Bachelor?" Lily retorted, her tone falsely polite and mocking. "_You're_ Black Bachelor?"

Bellatrix laughed in her demure little way, for she never overtly showed emotion for any reason. "Really, Sirius, that stupid little name of yours is quite the source of amusement. I'm rather glad that Barty put you sitting next to Lily for the night." She looked to Lily and gave her a smile that reminded her of a toothpaste advertisement. "Please make sure to insult my cousin all evening; MçKenzie told me that you weren't exactly a fan of those Marauders."

"I love the Marauders!" piped up Barty excitedly. "James taught me how to fly!"

"Of course he did, dear," said Bellatrix, extending her hand towards Barty for him to take; he did so, and she walked away from the group. "MçKenzie, come, I have a man I want to introduce you to; he's very wealthy and _dreadfully_ Mediterranean."

The words 'wealthy' and 'Mediterranean' were enough to make Kenzie desert a friend who was dying in the street, so Kenzie did not even think twice about leaving Lily with one of her most hated. She strutted off with Bellatrix and Barty and Lily was stuck having to make conversation with a boring, self-obsessed twat.

"Your fearless leader is apparently so great now that he can teach people how to fly, I hear?" she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. Strangely enough, Sirius grinned at her and shoved his hands in his pockets, with a good natured shrug.

"He picks him up and flies around the room," he explained. "Barty lives in his own little world, if you tone everything he says down by about six or seven notches, you'll get what he's talking about."

"Oh," said Lily. That made a whole lot more sense. "Right."

"I'll tell James you asked for him, though," said Sirius cheerfully, and with another grin. "He'll be thrilled to know that you brought him up so quickly."

"He told you how he knows me, I suppose," she said. It wasn't surprising that he knew of her, she supposed; Potter was bound to tell his fellow idiots that he had met another random girl that he quite liked the look of, or whatever he might have thought of her. Lily was sure she was only one girl in a line of many.

"Course he did, I'm his best mate," said Sirius. "The bloke's dead gone on you. I suppose I can see why." He looked her up and down in a manner that was critical, but by no means lecherous. Still, Lily found herself taking offence; as if she cared whether or not Potter's best friend approved of her or not? "You're quite pretty."

"Thank you for your touching words," said Lily sardonically, as they were thankfully all called to dinner and she began to walk towards the table. Unfortunately, upon reaching it she remembered what Bellatrix had said about Lily sitting next to her cousin, and when she was shown to her seat by a harassed looking waiter she saw that her hope of being put next to at least one of her friends had been dashed, because the person on the other side of her was Andie's husband, Amos Diggory.

Barty Crouch Jnr had thoughtfully put her sitting between an egotistical, leather-clad narcissist and a stupid Disney prince.

* * *

"Come again?" said Lily to Amos. "You actually _have_ a monkey? Or is that just a metaphor for a very disobedient child?"

It was an hour into the dinner party, which Lily had since learned had only been thrown by Bellatrix Black simply to celebrate the fact that she was, in her own words, 'really fucking fantastic'. She had successfully managed to avoid conversing with Sirius Black by asking the idiot Disney prince questions about how he had met Andie and how they had ended up married. Kenzie hadn't been lying when she said that Amos Diggory worshipped his wife; he did, and he was utterly in his element when asked to gush on and on about how amazing she was. That was, when he wasn't distracted by whispering sweet nothings to the woman herself. Whenever that happened, Lily simply talked to Mary, since she had been happily seated directly across from her, sandwiched between Eddie and Mitchell Mulciber, who never spoke at all save whenever he felt like making a sarcastic comment, and this was why Lily liked him.

"Oh, I _have_ a monkey," Amos was saying. "He's a capuchin; Andie got him for me for my birthday. He's incredibly hard work but it's very rewarding, you know. I love animals."

"That's... really amazing?"

"I know, isn't it? He's so clever, he does all these tricks, and I figured out that the _best_ way to win an argument is to bring him randomly into conversation. No, honestly," he added quickly, in response to Lily's disbelieving look. "All I have to do is say, 'Yeah well, I have a monkey,' and it floors people, just floors them."

"Oh." Lily genuinely did not know how to respond to that. "Um. Don't you need a lot of space... for a monkey?"

"Oh, we've _tons_ of space at the house. Andie and I bought a really big house at the seaside, didn't we, babe?"

"Yes, baby," said the illustrious Andie, whom Amos had already likened to a goddess several times, smiling at him as if he were the most magnificent creature on earth. Amos started muttering to her about how she was the prettiest thing in the house and then something about naked Fridays and Lily decided to tune right out of that conversation. She made the mistake of taking a sidelong glance at Sirius Black, who immediately noticed because of _course_ he had the same heightened senses that she did, and jumped on her glance in a nanosecond.

"James has been texting me," he said, as if it were a matter of no great importance. "Feel like saying hello?"

"Not particularly," she replied lightly, picking at her pasta with her fork. She wasn't feeling particularly hungry. "Do you want me to write a reply to him? On account of the fact that you can't spell, I mean."

"I'll tell him you were otherwise occupied, how about that?" Sirius tapped out a message on his phone and set it down on the table. "I'm sure he won't mind, he's got that manga to distract him."

In spite of her discomfort, Lily smiled to herself as she remembered the brief conversation she had had with Potter in her bookshop earlier that day. She couldn't bring herself to deny that he had a certain charm about him when he was garbed in everyday clothes and not swaggering about with pomp and arrogance. "He doesn't have to read it on my account."

"He will, though. Not to impress you, mind, he's not _that_ pathetic, but he likes you and Kenzie's told him that you've got one or two brain cells knocking about upstairs, so he probably thinks that you know what you're talking about when it comes to good books."

"Well, I should hope I do," said Lily, somewhat defensively. "Otherwise I wouldn't be much use in a bookshop, would I?"

Sirius did not notice her tone, and if he did, it didn't bother him, because he grinned at her. "I reckon you should go out on a date with him, you know."

"Oh really?" Her eyebrows shot up to the roof. "Why's that, Cupid?"

"Because." He shrugged. "Most of the girls who chase us are sort of only interested in the fame and shit; you're clearly not. I reckon he's got a better chance of being happy dating you than he does dating some mindless, droning fangirl, right?"

"Uh, _no_," said Lily, in some amusement. "He barely knows me from Adam; his chance at happiness with me is just as slim as it would be with any other girl."

"Kenzie thinks you'd make a good couple," Sirius reasoned. "She's been saying that for as long as I've known her, actually. She says the two of you are perfect for each other but she hasn't wanted to introduce you because you're too busy hating us on principle, or some such shit."

"Does Kenzie talk about me to _everyone_?" said Lily hotly, glaring over at her friend. It wasn't much use to do so, because MçKenzie and Barty had already consumed a couple of bottles of wine between them and both of them were pissed as farts. "Furthermore, am I not even to be considered in this quest for Potter's happiness? Does it matter if I don't want to date him, so long as he might be happy with me?"

"Nah, Evans." Sirius grinned at her again. "I reckon you quite like him, even though you don't want to."

"Based on what evidence?" she hissed, hardly daring to believe his audacity. "Your sheer, God-given brilliance? Or is all that bountiful hair putting too much pressure on your brain?"

"Just a hunch, I guess," he said, with another shrug. "That, and the fact that your eyes have been flicking to and from my phone ever since I put it on the table."

Lily very nearly died of embarrassment. She hadn't noticed that she had kept looking at Sirius' phone to see if James had replied to whatever text he had sent about her, if he even had sent a text, but she was horrified and dismayed to realize that she actually had been.

"That doesn't prove a thing," she said delicately, picking up her own wine glass, which was filled with water, and talking a sip. "If all you're doing is grasping at straws, then I don't think I can take anything you say seriously."

"Tell me, cousin," piped up Bellatrix, who interrupted other people's conversations whenever she felt like it just because she thought she was entitled to, just as Sirius opened his mouth to retort. "Have you and your little friends made any headway in catching Man Eater?"

The silence that descended over the table was immediate and striking. The number of murdered men in the city had risen to seven halfway through the week, and over the past few days the mysterious force that had been finding these men and tearing their bodies to shreds had officially been dubbed 'Man Eater' by the press, as if the city had finally found its own super-villain to go head to head with the Marauders. Whether or not Man Eater was human was neither here nor there, apparently, the media was having a field day and men in their mid-twenties who fit the physical description of those already killed were cowering in fear all over the city.

"Nothing that I'd be at liberty to tell you," said Sirius testily, staring resolutely down at his dinner. "I'm sure you find it wildly amusing, all the same."

"Well, of course, to commit a murder is a foul and heinous thing," said Bellatrix smoothly, with a smile upon her face and a mischievous glint in her eyes. "But you must admit, the violent downfall of seven men, all of whom married and all of whom recently discovered to have been cheating on their wives, does instil a certain feeling of justice amongst wronged women in the city. Considering the circumstances," she continued, tracing her wine glass with her perfectly manicured finger. "I can hardly say I feel much sympathy for them."

"That's right," said Kenzie loudly, who was more than a little bit drunk. "Kill the bastards, kill 'em all."

"You would enjoy something like that, Bella," said Sirius darkly. "I'd almost suspect you of doing it if I didn't think you'd be so afraid to get your fingernails dirty."

"If only I could," Bellatrix sighed, and picked up her glass again, taking another sip of her wine. "Mitch, darling, you'd dispose of the bodies for me, wouldn't you? I do so despise heavy lifting."

"It'd be something interesting to do on a Monday night, I suppose," said Mitchell quietly, seeming far more interested in his dinner than in Bellatrix Black's longings to murder adulterous men.

"Oh Bella, stop talking about morbid crap," said Andie loudly, and rolled her eyes at her sister. "We all know you're a psychotic bitch and we love you for it."

"Just like we all know you're a nymphomaniac, Andromeda dear," said Bellatrix sweetly, giving her sister her toothpaste-advert smile. "I'm surprised you and Amos haven't retired to the bathroom with another insubstantial excuse yet."

"The night is still young, sis," said Andie, winking at Bellatrix, who gave another decorous laugh and drained the rest of her wine.

"I love this family!" said Barty happily, while Regulus squirmed in embarrassment and buried his head in his hands, raising his glass to Bellatrix before gulping down his wine. Lily was glad that somebody did, at least, like the Blacks, because she found them utterly impossible to comprehend and she could tell by the looks on Mary and Eddie's faces that they were lost for words as well.

"You get used to it," said Amos quietly, and Lily could feel Sirius' eyes on her; he could obviously hear what Amos was saying. "It's how they show affection or something, I dunno. Bellatrix is a weird one."

"I'll say," said Lily quietly.

"I thought she was a man, once," he continued, and now that Lily thought about it, he looked a little bit drunk, too. "Bit of a mix up with Barty, and then he turned up at my house. That was also weird."

"Uh huh," she said. "Fabulous."

Sirius Black's phone went off to indicate that he had gotten a text message, vibrating against the table, and Lily's disobedient eyes betrayed her, as did her cheeks, which reddened considerably when she saw the name that flashed up on its brightly lit screen. With an insufferably smug grin, Sirius picked it up and read whatever it was that James Potter had sent him, typed a reply and put it back down again.

"Pride comes before a fall, you know," he said, quoting one of the oldest clichés in the book as he speared a piece of lamb on his fork with vigour. "If you want to keep quiet about the fact that you fancy my friend and don't like to admit it, be my guest, but you're going to be the only one who suffers for it."

He shoved the piece of lamb into his mouth and chewed it in a disgusting fashion, smiling at Lily once more as he desecrated the meat between his teeth, and the sight of it made her want to slap his silly little face. He really was the worst.

"Yeah, well," she said, utterly unable to think of anything else. "Amos has a monkey."

* * *

Lily awoke the next morning with a headache, even though she hadn't drank any alcohol and even though she wasn't normally prone to headaches that hadn't come as a result of picking up on hysterical cries from all over the city. She was due to travel into work to sort out some paperwork but the throbbing pain in her head, the rain outside, and the sight of her best friend and her best friend's boyfriend lying tangled in one another's arms and slumbering peacefully (that she only happened to catch sight of on the way to the bathroom because Mary had left her bedroom door open) all conspired to make her crawl back into her own bed and pull the covers over her head with a groan. It was a Saturday and she owned the damn shop, she reasoned with herself. Mary was only the manager of the motorbike shop and she sure as hell was never going to work a weekend again for as long as she stayed there. There was no reason why Lily shouldn't have done the same.

She couldn't fathom why she had woken up in such a bad mood, save for the fact that she had been forced to spend the evening in the company of the pretentious Bellatrix Black and her almost equally annoying cousin, and maybe that was reason enough. When she wasn't being ribbed about her latest and only admirer by his best friend, Bellatrix had been making creepy comments about the murdered men and making her skin crawl. She honestly couldn't understand why Kenzie liked her so much, but then, Kenzie was a lunatic.

* * *

"Get up," said Mary, and Lily felt a heavy weight on her legs. She groaned. "I made you some tea."

"Rise and shine, Evans," said Eddie, plopping down next to his girlfriend, and from beneath her covers Lily groaned even louder. She hated when Mary had a sentimental fit on and decided to include Eddie in everything. "We've got breakfast for you, too."

Her best friend's future husband poked her feet and Lily had to check herself before she kicked out at him, because the force at which she wanted to kick him would have sent him hurtling out of the window. As much as that might have amused Mary at first, she would have been less thrilled when Eddie fell to his death and it probably would have caused a row, because Lily sure as hell wasn't going to jump up from her comfortable bed and save his sorry ass.

"You're both utter bastards," she grumbled, while Mary tugged at her covers. "Can't you see that I'm hungover?"

"Oh, _yeah_," Mary scoffed. "Right. Lily the teetotaller, drunk out of her tree."

"My drink was callously spiked last night," Lily lied, drooling all over her pillow in her half-alive state. "Cheers for noticing."

"The fact that you'd even have the capacity to make up something like that is proof that you're not hungover, sis," said Eddie cheerfully, poking at her feet again. Eddie liked to call her sis; Lily didn't mind and it annoyed his girlfriend no end for absolutely no reason at all.

"Eddie," said Lily tersely. "I love you dearly, but I hate you."

"You make no sense," said Eddie. "But I appreciate the sentiment."

"Right, come on," said Mary, finally managing to yank the covers off Lily's head. Lily knew she revelled in having people like Eddie around when she had to do things like force her best friend out of bed, because when it was just the two of them she was absolutely no match for Lily and her superhuman strength. "Rise and shine, darling."

Lily blinked up at Mary, so pretty and dark-haired and fresh looking, in spite of how she actually had gotten drunk last night, and then at Eddie, who was also so pretty and dark-haired and fresh looking. She probably looked like a corpse; it just wasn't fair.

"I wish you two a long and miserable marriage," she said bitterly, glaring at both of them. Eddie laughed, and Mary got up from the bed to fetch a tray from Lily's dresser. "What time is it?"

"One in the afternoon," said Eddie helpfully, which was something of a shock. Lily was so sure that only five minutes had passed since she had gotten up at seven and passed out again. One of those mornings, she supposed. "We were going to wake you up earlier but we thought we'd let you sleep in a while."

"So thoughtful," Lily groaned, sitting up in bed as Mary sat back down and handed her a tray of bacon, eggs, sausages and toast, along with a steaming hot mug of tea. "Well shit, Mary, I can't exactly hate you after this."

"Oh, don't worry about it." Mary laid her head on Eddie's shoulder and grinned at her best friend as Lily picked up her fork and began to tuck into her fried eggs. "Consider it an apology for going along with Izzie's suggestions yesterday and hurting your delicate feelings. I got her phone number, actually, she's fantastic; we're going to go shopping and lunching soon, with Kenzie. Obviously you're coming. We'll have to get you something to wear for your date with James."

"I heard you managed to score a date with Captain Spectacular," said Eddie cheekily, and gave her a wink. "Proud of you, love."

"Bugger off, Eddie. It's not a date, it's… shit, is it Saturday?" Lily suddenly recalled the last words that James had said to her in the bookshop on the day before. "Do I have a date I didn't agree to with him _tonight_? Is that why you've woken me up? Is Kenzie lurking about somewhere with more Mac eyeliner and Christian Louboutins?"

"Those shoes were fucking fantastic," Mary sighed wistfully. Mary had been green with envy when Kenzie had given Lily the loan of those shoes. "But no, she's not. That's not until next Saturday, loser."

"Oh, thank _God_," Lily sighed in utter relief and leaned back against her pillows. "But then, why the hell did you wake me up? You're always going on about how I need to get more sleep."

To her utter confusion, Mary and Eddie looked at one another with mirrored expressions of amusement.

"Should you tell her?" said Mary to Eddie. "Or should I?"

"Makes more sense that you should, doesn't it?" said Eddie to Mary. "You are her best friend, after all."

"Well, no," said Mary thoughtfully. "Actually, Lily should tell us."

Lily was far too tired to play Riddle Me This with two pretty, dark-haired, fresh-looking imbeciles. She glared. Oh, how she glared. "What the hell are you two losers talking about?"

"Well, Miss Evans," began Mary grandly, while Eddie got up from Lily's bed and left the room, laughing to himself. "It seems like you've got more than one new admirer, doesn't it?"

"Another admirer?" she said blearily, but her eyes widened when Eddie came back into the room, because he had not come back empty-handed. "What on earth..."

Eddie was carrying a bunch of flowers. Not a pathetically small bunch of flowers that one might buy at a petrol station, or an obnoxiously huge bunch of flowers that would overpower the senses and make the room smell far too sickly-sweet, but a pretty, modest, charming little bunch of germini, carnations, chrysanthemums and roses, all in pink and white, in a vase, and decorated with a pink ribbon. Eddie handed them to her with an amused wriggle of the eyebrows and Lily took them from him in complete shock. They were absolutely gorgeous.

In all their years of dating, Brian had never gotten her flowers. Nobody had ever gotten her flowers. Even her own father had never gotten her flowers. She had always dismissed them as being an insincere gesture given to women by cheating husbands who were trying to make amends and idiot boyfriends who couldn't think of anything more imaginative, but now that she had actually received some, the idea of it was actually kind of... sweet.

Unless Brian actually _had_ sent them, of course.

"Who on earth sent me these?" she said, burying her nose in them and taking a great big sniff. "They're beautiful."

"Beats me," said Mary, looking at the card that accompanied it and frowning at it, clearly very confused. She handed it to Lily, who looked up from her pretty petals and took it from her. "Unless you have any idea who Kyouya is."

"Kyouya," said Lily softly, looking at the name on the card - just a name, no other message, that's all it was - and her thoughts flitted back to the day before, and the small conversation that had taken place behind the bookshelves. She had told him that romance was only acceptable in fiction when he had asked her if she was romantic, had claimed that real boys were boring, and so instead of getting her flowers and signing them with his own name, he had...

"Oh."

There were butterflies in her tummy again.

**A/N: Oh lawls, I'm so sorry for that bitchslap of new people. You won't actually see most of them again, but one or two of them are very important. Amos, on the other hand, is not. He's in there because one of my friends played him in an online Harry Potter rpg (I played Andromeda but Andie is a much prettier name) and he was just so hysterical that I had to write him into at least one of my fics. He amuses me, if nothing else. And isn't James such a little cheeseball? I love him so.**


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note: This chapter suffered a million re-writes before I posted it because it just would not cooperate with me and also because I was distracting myself by reading manga, so sorry for the wait, you guys. Love me?**

**CHAPTER SIX**

"Hello?"

"_Honey_! Hi! Good morning! It's me!"

"… who?"

Lily sat up with some effort, still half-asleep and disoriented, and looked at the little electronic alarm clock that sat on her bedside drawer. In the otherwise pitch dark of the room the harsh, cruel, bright red numbers on the little screen attacked her sensitive eyes with a vengeance and told her that it was merely half past five in the morning. Nobody called at five thirty in the morning unless there had been some sort of emergency which, judging by the obnoxiously happy tone of whomever on earth was on the other end of the line, was probably not the case.

"Silly girl; it's Izzie! Rise and shine, sleepy!"

"Izzie…" Super-powers or not, Lily was not a morning person who could snap to attention in the blink of an eye and it still took her several seconds to regain proper consciousness and remember that Izzie was the tiny spitfire of a woman who represented the Marauders. "Um… how did you get my number?"

"Rude!" Izzie practically screamed down the phone, evidently much insulted, as if taking the number of somebody whose permission she hadn't obtained and calling said person at an ungodly hour were perfectly polite things to do. "You sound awfully sick, are you sick? We can't have you sick for Saturday, if it's a cold you should try gargling; one tablespoon of raspberry leaves or lemon juice in hot water and mix in a teaspoon of honey. And dab some mentholated salve under your nose, and remember to take a nice, hot -"

"I'm not sick," Lily hastily interrupted her, her phone pressed to her ear as if doing so might break it apart so that she would never have to hear Izzie's high-pitched, unquenchably cheerful voice again. "I'm exhausted, I just woke up. It's five thirty in the morning."

"Is it?" There was a pause, and then a laugh. "Even so, you can buy microwavable hot packs from the pharmacy and apply them to your sinuses if you're congested – shut _up_, Jazmin! _Urgh_, my sister is over and she's really the most annoying little _shitbrick_ of a -"

"Do you always wake up this early in the morning, Izzie?" Lily interrupted again, unable to think of anything else to say but unwilling to listen to Izzie ramble on about her irritating sister.

"Oh, I haven't slept," she said airily.

"Ah." This person was completely insane, Lily privately concluded. "Is there a reason why you're calling me?"

"Well _obviously_!" Lily could practically see Izzie rolling her eyes. "I'm just calling to discuss the details of your date with James on Saturday!"

"What date?"

"What do you mean, what date? _The_ date! I've got everything booked! Dinner at seven and _Chicago_ at the Orion theatre at eight; means you probably won't be able to enjoy three courses because the restaurant and the theatre are ten minutes apart but who wants to wolf down three courses like a big fat pig on their first date anyway, am I right?"

"Uh…"

"There'll be photographers outside both places, too, so I've made some appointments for you to have your makeup and hair done, and I've gotten my stylist to pick out some nice outfits for you. I'm thinking either browns and golds or greens and blues, to go with your hair."

"Ah. Right. Izzie, see, the thing is -"

"I'll have to pick something for James so he can match you. There's nothing worse than a colour-clashing couple."

"Izzie, Christ, I'm actually not going on the -"

"Maybe black, you'd both look good in black, although is black too arty and pretentious? Even when I try to picture James in all black I immediately see him in a fucking beret. Besides, Sirius has the corner on all black. No, that won't work."

"I don't really care what outfit you pick because I'm definitely not -"

"So anyway, you should tell me now if you've got any skeletons in your closet that the press might get wind of. Nothing serious, just if you've ever popped out a baby as a teenager or taken drugs or anything like that, because James has a reputation to uphold and I can't have him going on a date with someone who-"

"IZZIE!" Lily yelled, so loudly that Mary in the next room shouted something highly uncomplimentary and banged on the wall. "I am _not_ going on that bloody date! Not now and not ever, so you might as well cancel your reservations and tell your stylist to take a flying leap because I am _not going to turn up_! Is that clear?"

There was a very long, very tense, and very terrifying pause, and then…

"I'll call you again when you're a little less sleepy, darling, okay?" Izzie chirped, and it was clear to Lily that everything she had just said to her had bounced off of her ridiculously thick skin like a rubber ball. James had been right when he'd told her that his publicist was scary. "See you Saturday!"

She hung up the phone, and Lily sank back into bed with a grateful moan and pretended to suffocate herself with a pillow.

Whoever had first invented mobile phones was a callous, sadistic bastard.

* * *

"Why do you have to be so _bloody_ antagonistic all the time?" he snapped, as he gave the small of his captive's back a quick, hard shove and sent him propelling into Lily's waiting arms. "I'm getting downright sick of it!"

"_Me,_ antagonistic?" Lily caught the guy easily even though Captain Spectacular had pushed him towards her with a force that could have broken her ribs had she just been standing there unprepared. "What about _you_?"

"_I'm_ only on the defensive," Captain Spectacular hissed, as the man they were currently pushing towards one another hit his torso and staggered to the ground. He scooped him up by his collar with one hand and held him dangling two feet above the ground. "_You_ bloody well started it."

"Would you two _please_ put a sock in it?" said The Professor sharply, as his partner in crime-busting geared himself up to attempt to knock the wind out of Lily again. "And stop throwing that criminal at one another like that, this isn't a game of basketball."

These instances of bumping into the Marauders were getting more and more difficult for Lily to deal with, now that she had spoken to two of the members as herself and not as her unnamed, masked alter-ego, and her fears that they would find her out and expose her secret were growing by the day. Luckily she had always spoken in a different accent when she left the house in her mask and had also always taken care to sound as different to her normal self as possible, but even she didn't think that the Marauders were so stupid that they could be long fooled, especially if Potter persisted in trying to woo her. The black mask she now wore over the balaclava made doubly sure that James would not be able to make out her face if he looked closely and she had even taken to holding herself differently and walking differently to protect her true identity. Still, knowing that she could be found out by the very people against whom she had set herself was a big worry.

Even more worrying was the fact that she was finding it harder and harder to keep James Potter and Captain Spectacular as two separate entities in her mind, and unfortunately for her steely determination it was her feelings for the former that seemed to be winning out. Ever since he had come to visit her at the bookshop, and _especially_ since he had sent her those flowers, she had found herself thinking of him more and more frequently and not one of those thoughts were anything unpleasant. It had gotten so bad that going outside in her costume and looking for trouble had become a means of distracting herself from thinking about him, a method that worked somewhat well until occasion came where she would bump into him on the same job, at which time she would overcompensate by being even nastier to him than she had been. Today it just so happened that Lily and the Marauders, or three of them, at least, had happened upon the gang of scumbags, who were engrossed in beating up a pair of terrified teenage boys in a disused car park, at the exact same time.

"I don't get what her bloody problem is," he said to The Professor, dropping the criminal he had been holding in the air to the ground; he hit the floor with a thump and curled into the foetal position, at which point Black Bachelor pounced on him and took him to the corner where the other men had been shepherded. "I was perfectly nice to her when we first met and she snarled at me like a raging shrew. I'm the victim in this scenario."

"Hey!" Lily hissed. "Don't talk about me as if I'm not here."

"I don't see much point in trying to have a conversation with somebody who hates my guts for absolutely no reason, do you, Remus?" said James, because Lily could not see him as anything else _but_ James any more, even in a ridiculous red and gold costume with a cape.

"Probably not," said The Professor, taking a phone out of his coat pocket, and Lily realized that this was the book loving friend to whom he had referred a few times. "But I highly doubt you're going to endear yourself to her by stooping to the level of a child."

"_She_ acts like a child," James protested sulkily.

"Again," said Lily, crossing her arms over her chest. "I'm still here."

"Don't blame James, Remus," said Black Bachelor, airily from his corner, where he was single-handedly holding down four men without so much as flinching. Lily noted that his superhero attire was pretty much alike to what he had worn at his cousin's party. "She's always unnecessarily rude and she gets mad at us whenever we beat her to a score."

"Besides, how do we know she can even be trusted?" James added hurriedly. "She just turned up out of the blue and won't tell us anything about herself even though we're supposedly on the same side; she won't even let us see her face."

"You just want to see what she looks like to satisfy your insatiable curiosity about _everything_ because you've got the mental age of a six year old," said the manga-loving Remus pleasantly as he tapped away at his phone, much to Potter's indignation. In his brown trench coat, white shirt, braces and brown trousers, he really _did_ resemble a professor of some sort and his costume was probably the least stupid. Come to think of it, he had always been the Marauder whom Lily had not hated quite so much. "I don't blame her for wanting to keep her identity secret; she's not like us." He gave Lily a searching glance and a small smile. "At least, I'd wager a bet?"

"I'm not a camera-hogging nincompoop, if that's what you mean," she said defensively.

"You _would_ jump to that conclusion," said James all huffily, his mood seeming to very much match the cold, pitch black night that the four of them were surrounded by.

"Well, it's the only logical one," she replied acidly, even though in her heart of hearts she knew that he was right about one thing, Lily had turned on them and treated them with cold disdain from the very moment they had first met one another. "Where's your fourth little brat, anyway, at a photo-shoot?"

"It's his night off," said Sirius shrugging.

Lily blinked, even though none of them could see it. "Night off? _Night off_? I'm sorry, I didn't know that people who _supposedly_ devoted their lives to saving others took nights off."

"Well, yeah," said Sirius, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "We are people too, you know. We've got lives and shit. Just because you've clearly got nothing better to do with your time -"

"This is coming from a bunch of men who spend most of their time doing press work, yeah?"

"It's actually quite a small portion of our time, in comparison to everything else we do," said Remus, frowning mildly at whatever it was on his phone that he was looking at. "I happen to find it quite worthwhile, really."

"Oh really," Lily tried to sound scornful but there was something about The Professor that made her slightly softer, perhaps because there was something so adult about the way he spoke to people. "Why so?"

"Well, I don't really know how to put it into words," he said, with a shrug, and Lily thought she saw a hint of a smile around the corners of his mouth. "Perhaps you should ask James; he can explain it far better than I can."

"I'm not explaining anything to her!" said James hotly, shooting imaginary daggers at his placid friend. "Why does it have to be me?"

"Poor James," said Sirius, as one of his captives made a break for it and he caught the back of his collar between two fingers. "He can't seem to escape women who hate him."

"Oi!" James turned on his friend and pointed an accusatory finger into his face, blushing like a poppy. "Shut up about her already."

"Don't be stubborn, James," said Remus gently, while Lily's stomach plummeted for a moment as she wondered if Sirius had just referred to her everyday self and that was what had made Potter blush like that. "She wants to know why we do what we do and you're sick of being judged at face value, so tell her."

"Shouldn't we be taking those guys down to the station and bringing those two boys in to make their statements?" James suggested hopefully, pointing at the two victims of the gang who were both sitting against a Subaru and watching the scene in silence. "Since the Dark Princess over here doesn't seem to have called her police mole yet. God," he added, seemingly as an afterthought. "I hate that sodding bloke."

"I thought I'd actually let you lot handle the situation for once," she said coldly. Really, she had just been grateful to miss out on another conversation with Brian. "Since you're so unused to it."

"Right," said Remus firmly, as James opened his mouth to retort. "We're never going to get anywhere like this, so I'm going to make a suggestion to you." He looked at Lily. "If you're willing to listen."

Lily shrugged. "I suppose I might as well."

"From what I gather you seem to be under the impression that we place more emphasis on our own fame than on actually helping people, am I right?"

She nodded shortly. "Something like that, yeah."

"Which leads me to believe that although the story of how we got our powers has been public knowledge since we were children, you haven't become aware of it for some reason or other, yes?"

"Uh…" This was news to Lily. She glanced momentarily at James, who was suddenly beginning to look quite smug. "It's not something I ever would have been interested in researching, no."

"Then I'd like to ask you to look it up," Remus continued. "If for no other reason than to build some bridges and create a means for us to help one another. You don't want the spotlight and we all respect that."

"Heh," said Sirius loudly.

"Cheyuh," muttered James, but also loudly.

"Okay, maybe only _I_ respect that, but I don't see how we can't help one another in future whilst still preserving your anonymity."

"What benefit would that be to any of us?" said Lily confusedly. "I'm perfectly fine working alone."

"You must understand," said Remus, still very gently. "Until we met you, we didn't know there was anybody else in the world with powers like ours, and it stands to reason that there could be more out there who aren't as ruled by their morals as we are."

"Like that Man Eater, for one," said Sirius.

"That's true," said James all of a sudden, dropping the derision from his voice, as if he finally understood what Remus was getting at. "I suppose if there are bad guys out there with powers like ours, they won't be as easy to deal with as your regular criminal."

"Oh," said Lily. "So… strength in numbers, that's what you're saying?"

"Precisely," said Remus. "I'm not asking you to form an alliance with us on the spot, and you don't even have to tell us who you are, but if you could pay us the courtesy of researching how we came by our powers, I think you might see us in a new light, and I'll make sure that certain members of the group treat you with more respect from now on."

"Why can't you just tell me yourselves?" she asked, feeling put-out. Remus merely smiled at her as if he understood how she felt. The polite and respectful way in which he treated her actually made her feel guilty for the hard time she had given them, on top of her guilt about having judged James. If one of the Marauders were willing to throw her the opportunity to make amends, she was rather inclined to take it, if only so that she could find out more about them and prove to herself once and for all that she had either been wrong or right about the lot of them. At least then she would be able to get Mary off her back about it.

"Don't you think you'd be more comfortable if you found out entirely by yourself?" said James, surprising her once again by seeming somewhat interested in this turn of events.

"Yeah," said Sirius. "No offence, but you don't exactly seem like the type who'd believe everything we told you right off the bat."

"True," said Lily, with a shrug, to which all of them actually laughed a little.

"In any case," said Remus. "Once you know, you'll realize how there's absolutely no way that we could conceal our identities from the world. Believe me, there are times when I'd like to."

"Why are you handing her this olive branch now?" piped up James. "You've never shown the blindest bit of interest in reaching out to her before."

"Yeah, exactly!" said Sirius. "Why this all of a sudden?"

"Oh, you know, I'm just sick the rows," said Remus, and Lily realized that she hadn't been mistaken about that hint of a smile on his face; it was most definitely there as he surveyed her with light brown, searching eyes and extended his hand towards her. "You'll read up on us a little? And perhaps then we can move from there?"

She looked from James, who was looking dubious, to Sirius, who was laughing, and to Remus, who was still gazing steadily at her as if he could see right past her mask. The popular rumour that he could read minds swam into her thoughts and she almost gasped because that would surely mean that he… but he couldn't, because he would have told James already. The rumour about his special skill must have been just that, a rumour. She had nothing to worry about.

"Sure," she said, taking his hand in hers and shaking it."

"Excellent," said Remus. "The healing starts now."

She didn't even want to _begin_ to wonder what on earth she had just gotten herself into.

* * *

"An explosion?" she said blankly, staring at her friend. "That's it?"

"Not just an explosion," said MçKenzie, who was tapping away at her laptop. It was a Thursday afternoon, two days after Lily had run into the Marauders, and it had taken Lily two whole days to pluck up the courage to ask her friend how it had happened, as she hadn't been able to bring herself to search the internet for it for some reason. "An explosion in the house of a noted scientist involving four of the richest and most high-profile children in the city, it must be fourteen years ago now. The four of them were unconscious in hospital for _days_ before they came to, there was public uproar."

"Why did you never tell me this before?"

"I thought you knew!" said MçKenzie, rolling her eyes. "_Everybody_ else does; it's just not referred to very much in today's media because of all the legal complications involved. Apparently there were highly toxic chemicals in this lab that were nothing like anyone had ever seen before or some such shit; the scientist who had been working on them died in the blast and his wife entered into this crazy legal battle to get his name cleared because all these rumours started about how he had lured the four of them in there to experiment on them and shit."

"Experiment on them?" A sick, churning feeling materialized in Lily's stomach and she quickly repressed it. That had nothing to do with anything. "That's what people were saying?"

"Yeah, those were the rumours but his wife eventually got them quashed and nobody's allowed to mention it any more. He was just working on a new type of cancer medication or something; in any case nothing was proven because all of his shit got destroyed in that explosion."

"What did his wife say had happened?"

"She said that they kids were just over to play with her son and that they'd wanted to see his dad's lab, and there was a mishap down there," said MçKenzie tonelessly, unaware of how the colour was slowly draining from Lily's face. "The boys even testified for her; completely backed up her story. They can't remember much because they all hit their heads pretty hard in the explosion but they definitely remember asking to go down and see the lab themselves."

"That's so, so… not what I was expecting," she said to herself, calming down a little now that she knew of the Marauders' compliance with the wife's story. For a moment her imagination had been running riot. "Seriously not what I was expecting."

"Why?" said McKenzie with a laugh. "What did you think had happened? A bite from a radioactive spider? Born on a different planet? A bad reaction to a really nasty sandwich?"

"Well I don't know, do I?"

"Why'd you want to know about this now, anyway?"

"Dunno," she offered, with a shrug. "I was bored, I guess."

"It's not because of James, is it?" said Kenzie, her eyes lighting up all of a sudden and her voice raising several decibels. "Is it about James, Lily? Is it? Oh my God, it _is_! It totally is! Do you like him? Because I was on the phone to him earlier and he was talking about you and I think he really -"

"No, Kenzie, Christ!" It was a little bit about James, but Lily wasn't going to admit that. "What was this guy's name, anyway?"

"What, the scientist?" said Kenzie, to which Lily gave a nod. "Snape, Tobias Snape."

"Snape?" Another mental sigh of relief. Lily had never heard of that name. "Bit of a strange name. What about his wife?"

"His wife's name is Eileen. Apparently she went a little bit mad after all of the court cases ended and disappeared off the face of the earth for a while. Probably the stress of having lost her husband and kid in the one day, or something; apparently she never really dealt with it while the loss was still fresh and threw herself into the legal shit right away. That kind of crap would mess with anyone's head."

"Her kid?" Lily's eyes widened. "Her son died, too?"

"Yeah, it was the oddest thing." MçKenzie shrugged, and shut her laptop. "He and his dad both copped it and the four boys ended up with superpowers; they must have both been closer to the blast. Sad story, right?"

"Yeah," said Lily softly, tapping her fingers on MçKenzie's desk, and frowning down at her feet. "Really sad."

* * *

"We're the only people in the building who don't have their tree up already, you know," said Mary.

"Whether or not that was a statement based on fact or something you just made up, I won't hear it and I won't respond to it," said Lily unfeelingly, as she placed a bauble on a low hanging branch and sprinkled some glitter dust on top for added oomph. "Besides, it's going up now, isn't it? Dry your bloody eyes, Mary."

"You killjoy," said Mary, with a haughty toss of her head. "Christmas is _just_ over a week away and you've been too busy prowling the mean streets every night and kicking the shit out of sex pests to help me put it up; you've robbed me of a very valuable period of anticipation and shit."

"Those sex pests are such bastards, infringing on your seasonal joy."

"I know why you're doing this, Lily."

"Doing what?"

"Going out every single night to fight lowlife thugs and not getting home until all hours? You're trying to punish me for dragging you to Bellatrix Black's dinner on Saturday; I'm not stupid."

"God, Mary," said Lily serenely, nodding away and not really paying attention. "It has nothing to do with Black and her poxy dinner. I didn't even have that bad of a time, it was _fine_."

"I know it ruined your big plans to spend your Saturday night pulling a Batman and watching reality television shows about wife swapping in between knocking rapists about," Mary continued, and she probably was not even listening to her redheaded friend. "But you never take nights off unless I make you."

"That's not true," Lily protested, shaking another bauble. "I'm spending this Saturday night putting up the Christmas tree without you having to force me, aren't I?"

"Only because you haven't heard any screams of terror ringing across the city yet, just give it a few minutes." Mary sighed, and tossed a massive handful of glitter dust into the pine. "You don't relax enough."

"I relax plenty."

"Yeah, those two hours of sleep a night must be really satisfying," Mary retorted dryly, rolling her eyes.

"You could have put the tree up ages ago without me and had a much better time of it," Lily pointed out, somewhat irritably. She and Mary had never gotten to a point in their friendship where they had actually stooped to argue, but there had been known to be some sulky silences that lasted for a few hours at times. "This isn't quite the exciting bonding experience it was when we were seven and I happily would have skipped it."

"Do it myself?" Mary repeated, looking scandalized by this suggestion. "Drag that monster of a tree all the way back to the apartment when you could lift it with one hand? Not bloody likely."

Lily knew that she really was being a killjoy and that Mary was perfectly right to be peeved with her for constantly making excuses to put off putting up the tree, but the past year had made it difficult for her to muster up very much Christmas spirit when occasion required. Not to mention the fact that she'd been working extra hard every night for the past week in order to make up for spending a Saturday evening at a dinner party from which she had no real means of escape, instead of doing what she felt she ought to have been doing. The idea of even acknowledging the fact that it was Christmas outside of work made her want to curl up under her duvet and vanish into thin air. However, Mary had been bugging Lily about putting their tree up ever since the end of November - now that it was December 18th and her best friend was starting to shoot her murderous glances from across the breakfast bar in the morning, she hadn't been able to put it off any longer.

"You could have gotten Eddie to help you."

"Oh, Eddie." Mary, who always claimed to love Christmas until the day actually arrived and she remembered in a hurry that she absolutely detested it, was obviously a far more enthusiastic participant in preparations than Lily was. She had wrapped herself in up fairy lights and was doing slow laps around the tree with shiny red tinsel. "There's no way in hell that I'd ever ask him for help with anything. He's a man; men are useless."

"Poor Eddie," said Lily with a sigh. "What on earth has he done to bother you this time?"

"I hope you know that we're keeping this up until the end of January to atone for leaving it so bloody late to put it up in the first place," Mary changed the subject, evidently not keen to discuss Eddie and whatever it was that she had overreacted to this time. "Who waits this long to put their tree up unless they're Christmas-hating misers like Scrooge? Or Brian," she added, as an afterthought, conveniently forgetting that Brian was one of those people who loved Christmas _too_ much and turned into such a schedule-obsessed, military freak on the day itself that he ruined it for everybody else involved.

"Busy people with busy lives," said Lily wearily. "I wish I _had_ agreed to that date now."

"Of course you do," said Mary kindly. "And we all know why."

"Only because I wouldn't be here putting up your bloody tree for you if I had," Lily hurriedly finished.

"Well," said Mary, smiling sweetly, eyelashes fluttering. "Maybe you'll get lucky and a drunken rapist will attack some helpless bint any minute now."

Lily looked at her friend incredulously. "We can only hope, Mary."

Mary did a little twirl with her tinsel, further entangling herself in the fairy lights and sending herself stumbling sideways into the couch with a groan of pain, whereupon she curled up into a ball and made big puppy dog eyes in Lily's direction, silently imploring her to pull her to her feet.

"Karma," said Lily in triumph, and spun around on her heel as somebody knocked softly on their door. "Did Eddie forget his key again?"

It was a rare occasion that somebody would actually knock on Lily and Mary's door as opposed to just letting themselves in because Eddie had a key, as did both of their parents and MçKenzie, and they were the only people who the doormen ever let in on sight – the rest of their visitors would have had to press the buzzer from outside and be allowed up by one of the girls.

"Eddie's on a boy's night out with Ben, the tosser," said Mary from the couch, where she had started to make herself comfortable, and looked at her watch. The mysterious door knocker tried again, a little bit louder this time. "Plus, it's too early for him to get smashed and turn up here singing about how much he loves me and how soft my boobs are."

"Maybe it's one of the neighbours complaining about my lack of Christmas spirit," said Lily dryly, looking at the clock on the wall. It was twenty past seven, which meant that it was twenty minutes into the date that was never to be, and she had turned her phone off to avoid Izzie's enraged phone calls. In spite of her repeated refusals, she was sure that Izzie had gone ahead and kept all of the bookings and even sent photographers to the restaurant and theatre. She wondered momentarily if the crazy publicist had somehow broken into the apartment complex – she wouldn't have put it past her to do it. "I'm busy with the baubles, you go get it."

Mary shrugged half-heartedly and did not move. "Wrapped up in fairy lights here, Lilypilly; you go."

"Urgh, hang on." Dropping her armful of baubles back into their box and accidentally breaking two, Lily made a face at Mary and walked over to the door. "I'm coming, I'm coming."

Upon reaching it and pulling it open, Lily wasn't greeted by the sight of an infuriated Izzie, or a drunken Eddie, or even an irate-looking neighbour armed with mince pies and a holly wreath, but none other than James Potter, dressed in casual attire that Izzie would not in a million years have picked out for him and looking rather good in it.

Her first impulse was to glance sideways at the long mirror that Mary had placed near the door when they had first moved in to make sure she didn't look like she had just been dragged through a hedge backwards, and her second impulse was to blush like a poppy because she had given in to impulse number one and actually fretted about her looks without thinking. Luckily she was looking pretty good; had she attacked her face with a bottle of cleanser before putting up the tree that evening he would have run a mile when she answered the door. Luckily, or not so luckily, he stayed firmly rooted to the ground.

"Oh," he said happily, unmindful of her inner struggle, and grinned at her. "So you _do_ live here. I was beginning to think I'd gotten the wrong apartment."

Lily was genuinely too shocked to respond and could only answer with a questioning look. Potter had evidently gotten into the complex using one or other of his 'Look at me, I'm the most amazing person in the world' superpowers. Either that or the doorman was a huge fan.

"Er, hi?" he said, gallantly trying again. "Did I catch you in the middle of a vow of silence or something?"

She blinked up at him, and he didn't vanish before her eyes like a mirage in the desert. This was both disheartening and wonderful at the same time. "You're at my home."

"Yes, Lily," he said. "Yes, I am."

"How do you know where I live?"

With a rather sheepish smile, but eyes that betrayed just how smug he was about the fact that he was standing outside her front door, James leaned into the hallway and looked into the living room, where Mary was still tangled up in fairy lights on the sofa, had picked up a magazine and was leafing through it. "Hi, Mary!"

Mary looked up from her gossip rag and winked at him. "Hey, you!"

"Ah." The light finally went on in Lily's mind. Of course it would stand to reason that Izzie was not the only person who had easily obtained personal information about her from one of her friends. "I see. So it's not just Kenzie, now _all_ of my friends are conspiring behind my back."

"All two of them, I _know_," said James, pulling a silly face, as Mary quickly pretended to bore of their interaction and went back to what she was reading. "It's disgusting. I'm highly offended on your behalf."

"Indeed," said Lily sardonically. "You look it. Why on earth are you here, if you don't mind me asking?"

"For our date, obviously," he said, looking mildly surprised. "Don't tell me you've forgotten about it."

"Hardly, considering how Izzie's been calling me all week long," Lily explained, with a look that mirrored James' confusion. Perhaps Mary, Kenzie and Izzie had all been lying to him and telling him that she was super excited to be dragged about town that night in the middle of a media frenzy. "But I told her I wasn't going and I got the impression last Friday that you weren't, either."

"Oh, I'm not picking you up for _that_ date," said James, waving away the matter of Izzie's precious brainchild. "That date's a pile of crap. I'm picking you up for this one, you know, the one _without_ the screaming mass of photographers and sassy American musicals? It's better; you'll like it."

"This one?" Lily repeated blankly, looking up at him with her eyebrows raised. "This date that I also didn't agree to and actually haven't heard of until now?"

"You did so know about it," said James stubbornly. "You agreed to go, too."

"No I didn't!" she argued hotly. "You're completely imagining that!"

"Yes you did," he insisted, and the look on his face clearly indicated that he already knew he'd won this battle and Lily would be going out with him whether she liked it or not which, it occurred to her, she probably would be. She would have been lying to herself if she had said she was totally against the idea. "When I was leaving your shop a week ago I said 'see you Saturday' and you didn't say you wouldn't see me Saturday, which I took to mean yes, as anyone would, so you can't back out now because that's a really unmannerly thing to do."

"What on earth would move you to think that _that_ meant I was agreeing to a date?"

"The fact that I'm an incredibly optimistic person," he said, shoving his hands in his pockets and giving her a cheeky grin that made her stomach flip-flop in the most peculiar way. "So are you coming or what?"

Lily didn't know what she found more worrying; the fact that James seemed to live in a world of his own or the fact that she really, _really_ wanted to say yes. "You don't _actually_ have any reason to want to go out with me aside from the fact that you think I'm…"

"Hot?" he suggested helpfully.

"Well, that's not exactly the word I would have chosen," she said, blushing madly. "But yeah, I guess. That's not exactly the most valid of reasons, Potter, you hardly know me at all. How could you possibly know that dating me would be a good idea?"

From the living room, Mary gave a loud laugh, didn't even bother to disguise it as a cough or a sneeze, and started muttering asides about how Lily was a stupid tosser and was making a fool out of herself. James gave a little snort of amusement and shook his head, as if he couldn't quite believe how stupid Lily was being.

"You're a special sort, Evans," he said, his eyes twinkling with mirth. "Aren't you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know that physical attraction generally provides the basis for romantic interest, right?" said James, as if he was Lily's Math tutor and she was having trouble with a fraction. "There's a whole science behind it and everything, people base entire _careers_ around that theory. If I wanted to go out with you because the sight of you repulsed me it'd be a little bit strange."

"Where'd you get that spiel, out of a textbook?"

"Nah," he replied modestly. "I'm just really clever."

"Ha ha," Lily retorted humourlessly. "But physical attraction as a _sole_ basis for going out with somebody? Not so clever, Potter."

"That's actually why I proposed a date, you know," he said, now blatantly laughing at her. "In order to _get_ to know you, unless that rather obvious point flew right by your head, in which case we might as well go get something to eat now and I can explain it to you properly over enchiladas or something. Mary told me you like Mexican food," he added, to which Mary made a small noise of triumph from the sofa.

"Well, what if I'm not attracted to you?" she suggested, and finally felt some triumph. He was knocking her back with his logic and she was acutely aware that her face was glowing and he seemed far too comfortable with the situation and he was _winning_. "Haven't thought about that, have you?"

"Intensely, in fact," he said, his eyes losing some of their merriment. His brow creased into the smallest of frowns. "Do you not find me attractive, then?"

"I, well…" She faltered, unsure whether or not she could successfully lie to him about that, and decided to change the subject, which she did, and tried to look as if this was all of no importance to her. "I just think that it's a bit strange to go out on a date with someone you hardly know, Potter. My ex-boyfriend and I knew each other for nine years before we started dating."

"Oh, I see," he said, and he clearly wasn't fooled by her avoidance. "That turned out so well for you, of course."

Lily couldn't think anything else to say, so she stared him down derisively, or at least, she attempted to stare him down derisively, but doing so in the face of someone who was smiling so cheerfully was difficult and she was soon fighting to force back her own smile. The prospect of spending the evening with someone whom, in spite of her best efforts, she was deeply fascinated by, was dangling in front of her nose like a golden key on a chain and she was finding it difficult to pass up. She gave Mary a sideways glance and her friend nodded encouragingly.

"I'll just call Eddie," she said loudly, taking her phone out of her pocket. "And tell him that he and Ben can come over and finish the sodding tree."

Lily gave a sigh, heavy and defeated, and accepted her fate with dignity.

"Fine, Potter" she said, grabbing her prettiest cardigan from the coat stand near the door and rolling her eyes amusedly at the exultant expressions on both of their faces. "I'll go with you, but it's not because I like you or anything so you can wipe that stupid smirk off your face."

"There'll be plenty of time for liking me later," said James, looking very pleased with the whole affair as he stood back like a gentleman to allow Lily to walk past him and out into the hallway. He leaned once more into the apartment and waved at the dark haired minx who was still wrapped up in fairy lights and giggling at the both of them from behind her magazine.

"Bye, Mary," he said. "Thanks for the address!"

"No problem!" she heard Mary reply, and the glee in her voice was as plain as the nose on her face. "Use a condom!"

**A/N: That chapter was **_**difficult**_**. All of it but the beginning killed me. Next chapter is the date and I think that'll go smoothly, and not just because I'm out of new manga.**


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Note: This chapter is almost entirely Lily/James and it was torture to write because I was so desperate for it to be perfect. It suffered through about fifty rewrites, I'm not even joking. Plus, I kind of lost my grip on writing because I've had no free time for several months. I'm really sorry about that and sorry if I lead anyone to believe that I was abandoning this story. I never would. It's my favourite.**

**I got a review from somebody who wanted to know where I've set this story because the language pinpointed a few different parts of the world, and I'd just like to specify that I haven't set it in any particular place or country, in keeping with the fact that the entire thing is alternate universe. As for the language throughout, I am basically just using the language that I use in everyday life. I know that there are some Americanisms and Briticisms in there and that I'm Irish and some people are probably finding this confusing, but it's not a mistake on my part. I'm writing this the way I want to and using the words I normally use. I **_**do**_** apologize if anyone besides the anonymous reviewer has been bothered by it, though.**

**CHAPTER SEVEN**

Lily's previous experience in the world of dating was extremely limited and not particularly interesting in anyone's estimation, least of all her own. That was usually how she liked it.

Her relationship with Brian had lasted for three stale and monotonous years – her one and only serious relationship. Before that, the only dates she had ever attended had been awkward, teenage affairs conducted at a cinema in darkness and silence, while the guy sitting next to her coughed nervously and tried to slide his arm around her shoulder. They had never gone any further than a couple of weeks and a handful of uncomfortable kisses and Lily had never desired to take them any further. Her dates with Brian had never been particular inspiring, either; her ex-boyfriend had never been fond of going out to nice places or trying new things.

A stickler for his tired old haunts, Brian's idea of a date had consisted of going to a quiet bar for a few drinks before heading back to Lily's apartment in order to watch a rotten movie, usually something long and poignant and depressing. This would inevitably always end in Brian falling asleep on the sofa and Lily gratefully stealing away to her bedroom to get away from him. Had Lily had more energy, she might have spoken up about just how much she hated the familiar routine, but Brian had a way of sapping the life from her from her like a leech drawing blood. The Lily of the present could vaguely remember a time when she was spontaneous and fun and even vivacious, but Brian had drained it out of her over the course of three years and turned her into a mere shadow of himself, without having to lift a finger. He didn't even enjoy dressing up for Halloween.

It was strange, in a way, because Brian was a police officer and had dreamed of being one ever since they were little children. Lily had always assumed, in the time before she knew him as well as she eventually grew to know him, it took a daring sort of person to go into that line of work. Evidently, Brian's daring and thirst for adventure vanished at the end of every shift, because he had never wanted anything more from his relationship with Lily than the quiet, uneventful life of a couple of married pensioners. She had known him for nine years when they met for a friendly lunch and he asked her on a date, and she had consented because she couldn't really think of a reason to say no on the spot. Their date went well, so she went on another, and another, and then another, until they were somehow in a relationship and he was inexplicably in love with her. Her interest waned after about half a year but his grew stronger and stronger, and so Lily made the old and universal mistake of staying in a relationship with someone for whom she hadn't much feeling, simply to spare his feelings – and ended up hurting him more than she ever could have imagined.

Mary and Kenzie liked to tease Lily about her lack of enthusiasm for romance, and they especially liked to embarrass her by setting her up on blind dates without her knowledge, purely for the sport of winding her up. It was all in good fun and Lily never minded, but she still refused to give any guy a chance and had no problem walking out of a restaurant if she turned up expecting to see Kenzie and found a random man waiting for her instead, not caring if he thought her rude. It wasn't that she didn't find men attractive, but the idea of a relationship bored her because her own experiences were boring and she was too stubborn to open up to the idea that things could be different. Perhaps she might have changed her stance earlier, had she not suffered the ordeal of a year before, but unfortunately she had suffered a major setback and found it increasingly difficult to trust new people, men in particular. There were only two whom she did truly trust; one was her father, whom she adored, and the other was Eddie, who loved Mary with a steady devotion that encompassed all of the crap Mary liked to put him through and who had earned Lily's approval by working for it, always understanding of the fact that Mary wouldn't have anything to do with him if Lily didn't want him around. She had trusted Brian because he was hopelessly transparent, but she didn't anymore and never would again.

As she stepped into the elevator in her apartment building and James Potter joined her - avoiding her eye in an embarrassed, charming kind of way and shooting her a smile that brought out a rather sweet little dimple in his left cheek - Lily came to realize that for the very first time in her life she was actually feeling nervous about spending the evening in the company of a man. It was awkward and uncomfortable and not at all what she was used to, but the feeling was far from unpleasant.

She couldn't be completely sure, but it felt a little bit like a crush to her.

* * *

"Let's play the question game," he suggested. "It's fun."

Frowning down at a brightly lit computer screen and battling hopelessly with some stupid looking controls, Lily groaned with displeasure and shook her head repeatedly. "No no no, let's not."

"Why not?"

"Because," she said, her brow furrowed. "I'm trying to concentrate on _this_ right now."

He made a noise in the back of his throat and she glanced sideways at him; he was drinking coke from a straw and looking at her as if she vexed him greatly. There were a group of kids standing several feet away and staring at him as if they couldn't believe their eyes. Even as Lily watched, they started arguing amongst themselves about whether they should approach him or not. He hadn't noticed, or if he had, he was pretending he hadn't. She wondered how he'd react if they came over and started pestering him for an autograph or something like that – he had instructed Lily not half an hour ago that his famous alter ego would not be mentioned once for the whole evening and Lily had gratefully agreed with this, but he didn't seem like the type of person who would have ignored his fans. She wondered if she'd mind if they came over and he was forced to pander to them.

She probably wouldn't.

"So?" he said, once he had consumed enough to satiate his thirst for sugar and fizz.

"So," said Lily. "I don't have time for your questions."

"Sure you do," he said, not fooled, and ran a hand through his pretty black hair. "Women are supposed to be able to multitask. Aren't you lot meant to be able to have phone conversations whilst balancing a baby against one hip, making dinner, doing your taxes and juggling burning torches all at once?"

"Several things about that last statement were particularly sexist, James."

"Were not," he defended himself, pointing his paper cup of cola at her in an accusatory manner. "I was just sharing a treasured memory of my own mother."

"Your own mother often juggled flaming torches during your infancy?" said Lily, with a snort.

"Oh, all the time, especially whilst preparing the evening meals and gossiping over the phone to my aunty Bernice. Anyway," he said, pausing for a moment to press the 'ignore' button on his phone, which had been ringing incessantly since they had left the apartment – Izzie was rather angry and eager to share it. "You've just proven that you _can_ have a conversation whilst playing that, so…"

"You'll notice that I'm not playing it particularly well," she pointed out, jerking her head in the direction of the brightly lit screen that she was currently toiling over. "Since you are so cruelly distracting me with your inane chatter."

"You're not playing it well because you're bad at it," said James, poking her in the side and making her jump. "Talk to me, Lily. Pay attention to me."

With a deep sigh of great irritation that she didn't really feel, Lily stopped what she was doing and turned to face her date with her hands on her hips. He simply grinned at her, seemingly impervious to her wrath, both pretend and imaginary. They were in a corner of the arcade by themselves, thanks mostly to a loud and raucous dance machine tournament that was going on at the other end of the building. So far, the only people who had noticed them were the bunch of children – who seemed to have decided that the prospect of approaching Captain Spectacular on a day out was far too scary to attempt. It gave them some small amount of privacy in spite of the bright lights, loud noises and rowdy teenagers, and Lily was rather enjoying herself. Even if the game he had her playing was proving to be highly irritating.

"The mechanics of Pacman are difficult enough without a quick-fire question round, James."

"Tough," he said. "I don't particularly care. What dead person would you most want to be haunted by?"

She didn't reply, merely stared at him.

"What?" he said, unfazed.

"What kind of guy brings a girl to an arcade on a first date and then asks her questions about dead people?" she said, giving him a significant look, so that hopefully he would realize just how weird he was. This was definitely a first for Lily, and a risky move on James' part, but she would have been lying if she said that she was bothered by his choice of venue. She had actually been quite impressed by him; he evidently didn't feel the need to act unlike himself in order to make a good impression – if he had, he surely would have taken her out to a fancy restaurant and bored her to tears.

"I like how you said 'first' date," said James happily, taking another slurp of his drink. "It indicates that you'll be looking for a second."

She laughed shortly, rolled her eyes and turned back to the Pacman machine. Having never played it before, she was somewhat at a loss, but these protestations had fallen on deaf and appalled ears. James loved Pacman and thought it criminal that she had never tried it. Therefore, she was stuck learning how to play the stupid thing. "Jane Austen, if you must know."

"Oh really?" he said, folding his arms across his chest. "Why's that?"

"She was sardonic and witty and realistic," said Lily, not looking up from her screen. "And considering that I'm being haunted and not just having her to dinner, she'd probably feel sorry for me and give it a rest from time to time."

"That's awfully decent of her," said James.

"I know, isn't it?" Lily beamed as she managed to clear a level without dying; the first one she had cleared since she had started playing. "Who's your preferred celebrity-or-non-celebrity ghost of choice, then?"

"Oh, it's – ah," said James, frowning as his phone began to ring once more. Lily paused in what she was doing, thus ending her winning streak without realizing it, and watched James ignore the call again.

"Can't you just turn it off?" she asked, rather obviously, she thought.

"I could," said James, pocketing the phone for the twelfth time since they had arrived at the arcade. "Probably shouldn't, though. Sort of need to keep it on in case of an emergency."

"Oh, right," said Lily amusedly. "I see. So you've set up one of those fake emergency calls in case I turn out to be hideous and you can leave without having to explain yourself, yeah?"

"No, love, that's just you," said James cheerily, pulling a face at her. "It's because of my dad, actually. He had a bit of a problem recently and he had to stay in hospital for a while. He's out now and he's fine, but just in case something happens, I better keep it on, you know?"

"Oh," said Lily, feeling embarrassment steal over her. "Well. Now _I_ feel like a bitch."

He laughed at her and poked her shoulder, to which she responded by giving him a light shove in the side, giggling softly to herself. He was a nice kind of person to be around, she had realized.

"Shut up," she said, even though he hadn't said anything. "I really do feel like a bitch."

"Aw, don't," said James, and ruffled her hair lightly, which made her blush, so she pulled a face and turned back to the game. "Not for that, anyway. Feel like a bitch for hating me so much, if you want, but not because of _that_."

"You're so charming, James," she said dryly. "You make me feel so special."

"You're welcome," he replied, with a wink.

"Is your dad okay?" she asked him, feeling slightly concerned. She didn't like to think that he was taking himself away from his family if they needed him. "Now, I mean."

"Aw, yeah," said James, waving the matter away. "He's fine, really. I just worry about him too much. He's normally healthier than a teenager; it was really weird when he was admitted to hospital."

"I'll bet," she said softly. Lily had endured her own fair share of worries regarding the health of her parents, particularly her mother. "What happened, exactly?"

She felt bad for asking merely a second after she did so, because it wasn't her business, but James didn't seem to mind. He merely came to stand beside her, watching the little yellow blob she was directing make its clumsy way around the maze, all to the tune of spectacularly annoying music.

She sort of liked him standing next to her. He smelled nice.

"Heart attack," he said. "He shouldn't have, because he eats well and exercises and does everything right, but there you go. Shit happens."

"Do they know what caused it?" she asked, looking sideways at him.

"Nah, it was just bad luck," said James lightly, inclining his head towards the screen. "You should make him eat that little cherry over there; it'll give you an extra life."

"Oh," she said, turning her attentions back to Pacman. "Eat the cherry. Right. Thanks."

"No problem," said James.

He looked sort of uncomfortable and a little bit forlorn for a moment, and she felt bad for him, so she reached out and gave his arm a gentle squeeze. He smiled at her and she smiled back for a moment before blushing and turning away, feeling suddenly as if something slightly personal and intimate had passed between them. It wasn't a bad feeling, it was just strange. He had shared something with her that was evidently close to his heart, and that made her feel as if this was comfortable, as if they had known one another for longer than they actually had. Maybe it wasn't actually a big deal and she was reading too much into it, but it sort of felt like it might have been.

"That's sweet," she said, fiddling with the game's controls again. "That you care for your dad so much."

"Well, he puts up with me and I'm an annoying little shit at the best of times," he said, with a short laugh, shrugging off her compliment with modesty that didn't seem remotely false. "So it's the least I can do."

"That you are," she said, smiling to herself. "But I can sort of see why he puts up with it."

"Because he knows that nobody else will ever love me and feels sorry for me, I know," James replied, with a goofy eye-roll, sounding happy again. "I've thought of a change of subject, though. You'll love it."

She didn't want to push him, so she didn't object. "Oh, will I now?"

"Oh, you definitely will." His phone rang again and he silenced it once more, almost on autopilot by now. Lily didn't even need to ask to know that it was still Izzie calling. "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

She laughed. Of _course_ he would fire another silly question at her.

"I _am_ grown up, James," she said, shooting him a quizzical glance. "Unless you don't think I am, in which case I am sincerely worried that you're allowed to roam the streets the way you do."

"When you were a kid, then," he amended. "What _did_ you want to be?"

"A writer," she said airily, going slightly pink in the face. Her ambitions to write had become somewhat buried amongst all of the Brian nonsense of years back. "That happens when you come from a book-crazed family."

"That's really cool," said James, and he sounded as if he genuinely thought so. "Better than mine, I just wanted to work at an airport."

Lily snorted with laughter, so much so that she accidentally spat on the screen and had to wipe it really quickly with her sleeve and make it look like she hadn't just expelled spittle onto an arcade game. It was slightly worrying that she cared what he might have thought, had he seen it, because she wasn't meant to care about what he thought and now here she was, caring. "At an _airport_? _Why_?"

"I dunno," he said, with a shrug, and smiled at her. "I don't even like flying on planes, it's so boring. I just used to really love the airport."

"You're weird," she said, rolling her eyes.

"It's an exciting place, Lily!"

"You're really weird," she amended.

"Oh yeah?" He raised an eyebrow at her. "Well, you're pretty. So _there_."

She blushed at his unexpected compliment, but hid it rather well by shaking her hair and pretending to be interested in Pacman. "You also think you're far cleverer than you actually are."

"I am clever, tremendously clever," he said proudly. "Speaking of clever, can you describe the feeling you get when a delicate beam of sunlight hits a raindrop on the petal of a newly bloomed rose in roughly two thousand words or more?"

She stopped what she was doing to give him her most incredulous look yet; her Pacman got swallowed by a little red blip. "_No_!"

"Aw, pity," he said, with a pitying smile and a pat on the head. "No wonder you didn't make it as a writer."

"You're skating on very thin ice, my friend," she jokingly warned, giving him another slight push.

"It's alright," he assured her. "I'm a really good swimmer."

* * *

"You're so full of it, Evans."

"I am not!"

"Yes you are."

"I _absolutely_ am not!"

"You _absolutely_ are!" he insisted, raising his voice to a high falsetto in a bad imitation of her, and it _was_ bad, woefully bad, an unattractive and embarrassing kind of bad. She liked it.

"That was actually dreadful," she responded, nice and neatly. "You sound like my mother when she's in the middle of one of her menopausal fits of rage. One minute she's fine and the next she's throwing duvets out the window. "

"It's nice that your mother can trust you to keep the details of her hormonal imbalances to yourself," said James, dropping the terrifying squeak and allowing his voice to resume normal operations. "You're an exceptional daughter; no wonder your dad gave you his shop."

She and James had left the arcade after a solid two hours of friendly competition and endless questions, and were walking towards an area of the city that Lily considered to be an untouched gem, one with cobbled pathways, tiny, colourful vintage shops and charming little pavement cafés. It was a world apart from the maze of frosted glass and neon-lit nightclubs that filled the trendier areas, and a beautiful place to go whenever one needed peace, quiet and privacy. James had asked her to choose where they were to eat and she had settled on a gorgeous Filipino restaurant that served amazing food but was never particularly busy. The last thing she wanted was to attract attention from paparazzi, or from one of James' psychotic fans.

They were approaching a quaint little fountain plaza at that moment, one strung with beautiful fairy lights and slightly reminiscent of an old, Mediterranean village, in Lily's opinion. He was walking backwards in front of her, grinning cheekily at every smart comment she made and unlikely to trip and embarrass himself because, of course, he had prodigious reflexes.

"If you're prepared to drag me out of my lovely, warm apartment on a madcap excuse for a date when you hardly even know me, you can hear about my mother's unhappy slide towards old age," she retorted. "You deserve to suffer just as much as I have tonight."

He snorted his amusement, and smiled in that awfully endearing way of his. Lily was fond of the way he smiled; it gave him a rather mischievous quality and it made her feel pleasantly shy. "You're not suffering at all, you horrid liar."

"I think we've established that _you're_ the liar of this dynamic duo," said Lily, cocking her head to the side and staring him down. The whole evening had been a constant competition, with one of them trying to one-up the other. "Not me."

"Only you've established that, darling," he replied, quick as a whip. "I've been honest to a fault, you _know_ I really enjoyed that manga and you're _pretending_ to disbelieve me entirely on principle."

"You're absurd," she countered, with a snort of derision, and tossed her head self-importantly, sending waves of dark red hair spilling over her shoulders in one swift, fluid movement that she hoped was pretty. "What principle is that meant to be?"

"Oh, I dunno," said James mysteriously. "You _did_ swear to hate me for all eternity for no real reason, and you don't like going back on your word, or so Kenzie tells me. That _could_ have something to do with it, perhaps. Just maybe?"

"She's a compulsive liar who isn't to be trusted," said Lily simply. "And I still don't believe you, so stop with the italics. I can actually discern them in your conversation."

"_Ouch_," he said, clutching a hand to his heart as he did a funny little twirl on the spot and stopped walking, a move which very nearly made Lily walk smack-bang into him. "That got me here, Lily. That got me right _here_."

"Heartburn," said she. "You drank two cokes back at the arcade; it's entirely your own fault."

In spite of what she thought was a rather cutting retort James merely laughed at her and didn't appear to be remotely offended. He seemed to laugh at a lot of what she said, she hadn't failed to notice, whether or not she intended to be funny.

"My dietary habits come back to bite me in the ass once again," he said, and patted his hips, which had not an ounce of fat on them. "See these love handles? Can't get rid of them, no matter what I do. They say you never lose the weight after the first baby."

"Shut up, you prat!" she squeaked, struck by sudden giggles. She reached out and shoved him away from her with absolutely no force and no real intention to make him move, a pathetic, weak push that merely served as an excuse to touch him. She had developed this habit of pushing him somewhere between Pacman and the pinball machine and it was starting to alarm her. "You're such a _weirdo_."

"Stop hitting me," he whined, pouting at her and rubbing his chest. "I'm a delicate boy; I can't take all of this aggression."

"A _delicate_ boy?" she said, with raised eyebrows. "The world famous Captain Spectacular is a del-"

"Hang on a second, young lady," he cut across her, wagging a cautionary finger. "For the sake of you getting to know me better as a person and not as some annoying bloke off the telly, you and I agreed that there would be no discussion of my job on this date, so you can't pull that card out to cover yourself now just because I've caught you being abusive."

"I am not abusive!" she protested, fighting a losing battle with the corners of her mouth – they absolutely refused to stay down. There was some sort of bizarre cheeriness about James that was positively contagious. "I am kind and gentle and loving, you dreadful cad."

"You're terribly abusive, you're _horrible_," he replied, shaking his head sadly. "You demean me and bully me, and you make me feel bad about myself."

She stared hard at him for a moment, he quirked his eyebrows at her and she burst out laughing, lifting her hand to shove him again. Wise to her, however, he caught her wrist in his hand and shook it in the air as if he wanted to wag his finger at her but needed to make a bigger point, so he used her whole hand instead.

"It's incredibly immature of you to laugh at my suffering," he carried on, getting into his stride, absolutely born for amateur dramatics. Her attempts to pull her wrist from his grip were fruitless because she wasn't actually trying, and every word he said was making her giggle even harder. "Bullying is a very serious issue in this day and age, Lily, and the longer it goes ignored by ignorant people such as you the worse the problem will get. It's the kind of thing that results in gun rampages in shopping centres and innocent old ladies getting their heads blown off, and you're standing there laughing as if - for Christ's sake, does she _ever_ stop calling?"

If there was anything on the planet that could have effectively sobered them both up at that moment in time, it was another unwanted phone call from James' crazy publicist, who had stopped with her persistent calling ten minutes ago, but she had clearly only been trying to mess with their heads and lull them into a false sense of security. Lily stared at the stupid phone as James took it from his pocket, silently willing it to burst into flames.

"I was missing her, you know," she said, while James mumbled nothing in particular under his breath and waited for the phone to stop. "Being stuck with you and only you for the evening is awfully boring. You should answer and we can all have a nice chat."

"Funny girl," said James, with a slight smirk, and flicked her gently on the end of her nose, which for one brief second in Lily's subconscious was the loveliest thing that had ever happened to her in her entire life. "You think she'd be happy that I'm out with you since that's what she wanted so much, but _no_, she's having a heart attack because her little media circus were left hanging."

"I suppose it _does_ stomp on her credibility as a publicist a little if she tells people that we're going to show up and then we don't," said Lily fairly. "She should have listened to us when we both said no and not gone ahead with all of the crazy planning anyway."

"The day Izzie actually listens to somebody else is the day Sirius starts wearing pastels," said James, with a short, humourless laugh. "That girl has called me up in the past, had an entire conversation with somebody else who was in the room with her and then hung up without saying so much as a word to me. You can hardly expect her to li – oh, _bloody_ _hell_."

His phone was ringing again. Even the most patient of people had their limits and James had evidently reached his, because he snapped it open and held it up to his ear. "_What_?"

"JIMJAMS!" Izzie screamed before he even had a chance to say anything, her voice shrill and deafening even from the end of another phone that was several wonderful miles away. "JIMJAMS, YOU LITTLE SHIT, YOU HAVE IRREPARABLY DAMAGED MY CAREER. YOU SHIT. YOU _BASTARD_. I'LL CRUSH YOU LIKE A COCKROACH. I'LL BREAK YOU LIKE A TWIG. I'LL MAKE YOU DO ADVERTS FOR INCONTINENCE PANTS. I AM SIGNING YOU UP FOR ONE OF THOSE REALITY TELEVISION SHOWS WHERE THEY SEND CELEBRITIES INTO THE JUNGLE AND MAKE THEM EAT KANGAROO TESTICLES AND I'LL DONATE YOUR EARNINGS TO SCIENTOLOGISTS AND THE KLAN AND I'LL _RUIN_ YOUR CAREER, YOU _UNGRATEFUL_ LITTLE-"

"Bye, Izzie," said James, both looking and sounding supremely unconcerned, and as his crazed publicist continued to ramble he spun on his heel and tossed his phone into the fountain nearby, where it landed in the water with a plop and sank to the bottom to rest with all of the coins and unfortunate sweet wrappers that lurked below the surface.

"Well," said Lily, somewhat taken aback, as James turned back to her and smiled as easily as if throwing one's phone away in a fit of rage was a perfectly ordinary thing to do. "You sure showed her."

"You would think so," he said, with a shrug. "But what are the odds that she hasn't even noticed?"

"I'd probably stake the shop on it," said Lily, watching the rippling surface of the water in a crazily detached way. "Did you seriously just throw your phone into the fountain?"

"Yeah," said James happily, making a big show of dusting off his hands. "What of it?"

"You said you needed to keep it on constantly in case of an emergency," she pointed out, wondering if he had been lying about this or if he had just stupidly forgotten his own rule. "But then… you threw it in a fountain."

Judging by the look of dawning comprehension and utter horror on his face, it was the latter case.

"Shit," he said, and ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "Triple shit. Phones generally don't still work after you've dropped them in water and left them there, do they?"

"I have no experience with that because I'm not an idiot," she replied, with a wry smile. "Take it apart and put it in rice or something, that's what my dad does when he drops his phone in the kitchen sink." She rolled her eyes. "A frequent occurrance."

"Right," he said. "I'll do that."

"You probably should," said Lily, and paused. "How're you going to get it out?"

"I dunno." The phone had landed right in the middle of the fountain, somewhere beyond where the spray hit the water. "Go in and get it, I suppose."

"In the middle of December?" she gasped, as James gave a determined nod and pulled off his shoes, making to climb into the fountain. In spite of how resistant to changes in temperature she was, the air was still noticeably freezing and Lily knew for a fact that James wasn't above getting ill, because she certainly wasn't. "Can't you just… I dunno, move it with your mind?"

"Nah," he lied, hopping onto the fountain ledge. Lily knew for a fact that all of the Marauders possessed telekinetic powers, as did she. It wasn't exactly something that was kept secret from the press. She especially knew that James did because she had seen him use them first hand during one of their encounters as her alter ego. She opened her mouth to point out that she knew he was lying but he must have guessed what she was about to say. "Captain Spectacular can, but I'm just plain old James."

"You're anything but plain."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"You'll catch your death in there," she pointed out, as he dipped his feet into the water.

"I will _not_," said James, making his way towards the centre of the fountain. "I'm a big, strong boy. I don't _get _sick."

"You were a delicate boy just moments ago."

"I've got this amazing ability to talk shit, you'll come to learn," he said, eliciting a laugh from her, as he neared the centre of the fountain. "Alright, I see it. Let's see if I can get it without getting soaked."

"Don't drown," said Lily airily.

She watched in quiet amusement as James edged around the edge of where the fountain's spray hit the water's surface to best determine how to reach in and grab his phone without immersing himself in it, wincing as he walked through the cold water in spite of how he probably couldn't even feel it, and it occurred to her in an unexpectedly powerful rush of warmth in her chest that she was feeling truly contented for the first time in months, and it was entirely because of him.

She badly wanted to hang on to the preconceived notion she had of James being a terrible cad who was only trying to expose her secret identity and one-up her for his own amusement, but her resolve to do so was slipping through her fingers with each passing second. He was warm and witty and sweet but more importantly, he was genuine. There was something about him that exuded sincerity, and she liked that about him. She liked _him_. She didn't know any other guys who would bring a girl to an arcade on a first date, or deliberately try to annoy her, or even do something stupid like hop into a fountain, and she liked it. He was fun to be around, and he made her laugh. Brian had never been fun, and in turn Lily had lost her sense of it. Being with James made her feel the way she had felt before all of that, and she enjoyed feeling that way. It wasn't something that she was familiar with recently.

"Got it!" he cried, effectively snapping Lily out of her thoughts, and she looked up to see him holding his phone in the air, triumph apparent. She smiled.

"Took you long enough," she said, as he waded to the fountain's edge.

"Says the girl who stood around doing nothing," he countered. "You have no right to judge."

She tossed her head and harrumphed at him. "We can't go to dinner with you looking like that, you know. You'd humiliate me."

James, who was out of the fountain and shaking the phone as if this would somehow help it to miraculously recover and start ringing again, at which point he'd probably throw it back into the fountain, paused and looked down at his sodden clothes.

"Ah," he said. "True."

"You've officially ruined this date," said Lily calmly, folding her arms across her chest.

"That thought just occurred to me," he said, with a wince. "Guess who's embarrassed?"

"Do you plan on salvaging it any time soon?"

"I will," he said, and smiled sheepishly at her. "If you give me a minute."

"Save the precious few brain cells you have left," Lily replied, having already thought of an idea that was potentially beautiful and terrifying all at once, and she needed to present it to him now before she lost all of her nerve and the night ended right then and there. "I've already done it."

"Oh really?" He looked at her and raised an eyebrow, a move that Lily had tried and failed to perfect on many occasions. "You've got a blow-dryer hidden in your bag?"

"Oh, of course, I always carry blow-dryers around with me due to how inconvenient they are, and I enjoy putting myself out," she said, and rolled her eyes. "You can come back to mine, James, and dry off there. It would mean giving the restaurant a miss but I don't think they'd let you in anyway, look at you." She looked down at his trousers. "You look like a flood victim."

"Are you serious?" he said. He was looking at her face as if he was searching for something, perhaps he thought she was pulling his leg. She was a little floored by her own forwardness, were she being honest with herself; it made sense that he would be, too. "You want me to come back to yours?"

"Yep," she said.

"Really and truly?" he pressed on. "You're not messing with me?"

"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't, although not for any funny business," she said, drawing herself up to her full height, feigning self-assurance when all confidence had failed her. "I'm just not that kind of girl, James."

He stared at her for another few seconds, dumbstruck and dazed, but then he gave a low, short laugh and she knew he was going to say yes before he even said it. She smiled back at him, a smile that dissolved into inexplicable giggles, perhaps from relief, but she wasn't quite sure.

"Never thought you were, Lily. I'll go back to yours, sure," he assented, half-laughing at her giggling. He really did have the most endearing smile. "But what about dinner?"

"Oh, that," she said lightly, waving the matter away. Who cared about dinner at a time like this? "I'm sure I can rustle up something at home. How does beans on toast sound to you?"

"I love beans on toast, as it happens."

* * *

The apartment was quiet and dark when they finally got to her home, a journey which had taken a lot longer than Lily originally anticipated, probably because they had spent most of the walk dawdling and wasting time - her pathetic attempt to prolong the night as much as she could. Happily, James didn't seem to be in any hurry to escape from her, which she was happy about.

Not that she was planning on telling him that.

"I see Mary made great headway with the tree," she sighed, as she flipped on the light in the living room and saw that the only addition Mary had made to the unfortunate Christmas tree was to tape a note to one of the baubles. She crossed the room quickly and tore it off, making a mental note to throw the bauble at Mary's head in the morning, or the entire tree, if there was nobody else around.

"It might be a new style of decorating for Christmas," suggested James, as Lily gave Mary's note a quick once over and gritted her teeth. "Some sort of new-wave, minimalist thing."

"_Eddie came over drunk, had to take care of him. I left the tree for you to finish because I'm great like that. Have fun_," Lily read aloud for James' benefit, and sighed again. "Eddie is so convenient at times like these."

"Eddie would be Mary's famous fiancé, I assume," said James, letting out a low chuckle as he watched Lily roll her eyes and scrunch the note into a ball. "Didn't she tell you they'd have the tree decorated by now?"

"She can go through all the trouble of cutting a piece of paper into the shape of a star, writing a note on it with a different colour for every letter, covering it with glitter and tiny cut-out hearts, and leaving a kiss mark with _my_ best lipstick" said Lily irritably, tossing the note into the last dying remains of the fire that had been burning merrily away earlier in the evening. "But she can't hang some fairy lights on a bloody Christmas tree."

"You look like a worn-out mum who just happened upon one of her children pulling apart a cereal box," said James, grinning at her as he held up the many shopping bags he was holding. "And I mean that in the nicest way possible. Where do I put this stuff, love?"

"In the kitchen," said Lily, pointing to the kitchen door. She had remembered just in time that she and Mary were short on food when she and James had been walking home, and so a trip to the 24-hour supermarket had been in order, another reason why it had taken them so long to get back. Like a true gentleman, James had kindly offered to carry the shopping bags home for her, and Lily had graciously accepted. "As is the norm when one brings home perishable goods and needs somewhere to store them."

"I'm going to have to have a word with you later about all this sarcasm," he said, marching into the kitchen with her following close behind. "Where's the light-switch in here?"

"On the left," said Lily, but needlessly, because she had already snapped the light on herself, and very nearly walked smack into James, who had stopped dead in his tracks without warning her. "Eh, you want to move?"

"Lily," he said, sounding confused. "What is that on your fridge?"

"What's the matter, is it a big scary spider?" she replied with a snort, stepping around him to get a better look at what had made him freeze. What she saw there, however, was much, _much_ worse than a humongous arachnid, or any other kind of creepy-crawly that may have conceivably mooching around in her kitchen. She gasped loudly, utterly taken aback, and clapped a hand to her mouth in horror.

"_Jesus Christ_," she mumbled into the palm of her hand.

Lily's refrigerator door had been covered from top to bottom with numerous colourful newspaper and magazine clippings of James, fully garbed in his detestable superhero attire, all of which she had never even seen before in her life. Clearly Mary _had_ seen them, and from the looks of it she had been collecting them for a while, presumably in order to embarrass her in the event that James ever found himself visiting the apartment. Her motive for giving James their address became all the more clear in Lily's mind.

Her so-called best friend had even been kind and thoughtful enough, not only to scribble massive hearts all over most of the pictures with pink and red crayons, but to draw crude, redheaded stick figures next to some of the larger ones. If ever the ground could have opened up and swallowed Lily whole, engulfing her in the heart of deepest darkness and obscurity, now would have been the opportune moment.

Unfortunately, the ground decided not to act - stupid, uncooperative ground.

"They're not mine!" she squeaked, blushing from what felt like the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair as she skipped over to the fridge and began yanking the newspaper clippings away. She fully regretted ever texting Mary to inform her that she was bringing James back. That _bitch_. "They're, um, they're Eddie's."

"Oh really?" said James, from behind her back, and Lily could tell that he was smiling. "Mary lets her boyfriend cover her fridge with photos of men that he's drawn hearts all over, does she?"

"Mary and Eddie make for a… strange couple," she said breathlessly. Maybe once she got rid of all of the photos she could somehow learn the art of hypnotism in less than a minute and convince James that he had suffered a mad hallucination in her kitchen. "They're into lots of dodgy stuff, don't question it."

"I suppose Eddie is the one who spelled out 'LE loves JP' all over your whiteboard, too, yeah?" said James happily, coming up behind her and reaching over her head to pull down the clippings that Mary had stuck up the very top of the fridge, even though Lily could easily have reached them. Her heart jittered wildly in her chest for one mad moment. "Or does Mary have another mad boyfriend knocking about?"

She didn't dare turn around to look because he was close, too close, close enough for her to feel the heat radiating off his body and close enough for her to feel herself responding to it. She shuddered involuntarily and moved to gently knock her head against the fridge door with a groan, adding an extra miniscule whisper of distance between them to ease her sudden anxiety, a move which failed miserably because he was still _right there_. He made her nervous when he stood so close to her, it was embarrassing. "I'm going to kill her."

"You're well funny," said James, much amused, and still not moving. Lily didn't know if he was angling for some contact or if he genuinely was just trying to help her take the photos down, but he was messing with her mind, either way. "Nobody died, love."

"You _do_ know that she stuck these up and wrote all of that to embarrass me because she knew you were coming?" said Lily, with her head against the fridge and bright pink cheeks. "Don't you?"

"As much as I'd love to find out that the girl I like is a deranged stalker who dreams of cloning me as I sleep," said James, taking her by the shoulders and pulling her gently away from the fridge. "I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have let me wander helplessly into your kitchen if you'd known they were there, now." He spun her slowly around and grinned down at her in that way of his that hadn't failed to mess her stomach up considerably since the very first moment she had seen him in Kenzie's office. "I can't get to all of those photos if you're taking a nap against your refrigerator, so stay put for a second."

It was on the tip of her tongue to get cheeky with him and tell him he couldn't tell her what to do, but she found herself submitting meekly to the power of his stupid little smile. "Okay."

"Good girl," he said, with a wink, and turned back to the clippings. "Speaking of deranged stalkers, actually, I think I owe you an apology."

"Oh?" she blinked, slightly punch-drunk. "What for?"

"For acting like a deranged stalker, you daft girl," he said, tossing her an incredulous look over his shoulder. "You want these put in the bin?"

"Um, no," she said, gazing at his back. He had awfully broad shoulders. "Leave them on the counter. I'm sure Mary will have great fun sticking them to the bathroom mirror for weeks on end." She frowned. Lily knew a stalker when she saw one; she'd had enough experience with them and not just with Brian. James might have been forward and blunt and very proactive when it came to getting a date, but he wasn't cause for any alarm, as far as she knew. "How did you act like a stalker?"

He turned around and faced her questioning gaze, having gathered all of the photographs, tossed them on the counter and leaned against the fridge.

"I turned up at your house looking for a date and pretty much refusing to take no for an answer," he reminded her, looking slightly ashamed of himself. "That actually happened a few hours ago, you should know. You don't suffer from some sort of neurological disorder that affects your memory, do you?"

"You're funny," she said, without laughing. "I really don't think that makes you scary, James."

"I turned up at your work looking for you."

"I as good as invited you."

"I sent you flowers and read books you recommended to me, just because you recommended them."

"I like flowers," she said. "They're pretty. And I'm a good person to ask about books."

"I ran after you in Kenzie's office without ever having spoken to you before."

"That was romantic," she insisted loudly, rather bluntly; something she hadn't meant to say that slipped out anyway. His eyes widened in surprise and she blushed, her own eyes travelling down to the ground immediately and her hand moving to tuck her hair behind her ear. "I mean, I guess so."

He laughed, a little half-heartedly, because she was staring at her shoes in embarrassment and he was a nice boy and he was trying to make light of the situation to spare her blushes because he didn't want her to feel uncomfortable – she knew that about him already, without having to ask. "You definitely didn't think so at the time."

He had even offered her an escape clause. She could have taken it if she wanted to. She didn't.

"No," she said, very softly, and looked up at him, only to look down again immediately, her insides squirming. "I did think so at the time."

The atmosphere in the room had changed at some point – they'd been joking about those clippings and he had come up behind her and she had felt _it_, whatever it was, and her stomach was in knots all of a sudden. She didn't know what to do in a situation like this, a situation where she had feelings for somebody and when that somebody was gazing at her as if he was trying to see past her eyes and into her soul, which was what it felt like; a stupid, sappy sentiment that she would have laughed at days before this, hours before, even. She couldn't think of anything to say except for a few awful words that kept popping up in her head and demanding to be spoken, but she was too embarrassed to say them.

He saved her from speaking by doing it himself.

"That time in Kenzie's office, when I met you," he murmured, and she peeped at him to see him running a hand through his hair, awkward and uncomfortable and just as scared as she felt. "That wasn't the first time I ever saw you, to be honest."

She lifted her chin a little, and gathered enough bravery to look him in the eyes. "What do you mean?"

"I've seen you before," he said, going red in the face. "A few months ago. I was walking to MçKenzie's office to run through some stuff with her and I saw you outside, hugging her goodbye."

"You remember that?" she said, frowning slightly. "Even though we didn't speak?"

"More than remember it, Lily, I asked her about you. I asked her a lot, actually."

"You did?" She cocked her head to the side, unaware of just how ignorant she was being. "Why?"

He looked at her as if he thought she was mad, waiting for her to realize something, but she didn't.

"Because I'm a stupidly romantic prat," he said, in the tone of one who knew he was signing his own death sentence. "One minute I was going to a meeting and the next minute I was staring across the street at the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in my life. And I mean that," he added quickly. "I'm not some insincere prick who rambles off some pre-prepared monologue to every girl who catches his eye, I mean what I say. You are."

"I'm not, James," she hurriedly insisted. "I'm really, really n-"

"Yes you are," he said, with a steely sort of finality. "Don't even question it."

She should have insisted that he was lying. Mary would have wanted her to; it was the kind of thing that Mary did whenever Eddie gave her a compliment. She didn't, it would have ruined the mood; she nodded. Her heart was hammering in her chest with unequivocal speed. "Okay."

"Anyway," James continued on, his shoulders sagging a little, but clearly determined to get his story out there. "I asked MçKenzie who you were and she said that you were her friend and that you were this amazing, once-in-a-lifetime girl who I'd never have a chance with in a million years because you hated me and you were challenging and you couldn't see past the end of your own nose, but that she thought you might like me if you ever pulled your head out of your arse enough to try, and that was enough, really."

"Enough?"

"Enough for me to ask her to introduce us somehow," he clarified, running a hand through his hair. "I mean, I wasn't obsessed with you or anything, but everything she told me about you made me like you all the more, which was so _bloody_ stupid because I hadn't even met you yet and every time she _did_ arrange for me to meet you without your knowledge I chickened out because I was so afraid of looking like a prat and messing up the chance I didn't even have." He stopped, and took a breath, and she caught his gaze and he reddened even further. Actually, he looked as if he was fully ready to tear out of the room and never come back. "In the end she didn't even tell me; I turned up at her office and you were unexpectedly there and I ran after you like an idiot and completely humiliated myself."

"You didn't," she said quietly. "I told you already, you didn't."

"I did, but it doesn't matter," he concluded. "Because I did it again when I went to your job and I did it again for this entire evening, but you haven't run away in fear yet."

"No," said Lily. "I haven't."

"You haven't," he repeated, and his awkward stance lessened a little, as if she had somehow bolstered him up a little by agreeing with what he had said. "And if you've been planning on it that's not going to work for me because you're a million times the girl that Kenzie said you were and I'm pretty crazy about you, so if you do like me even a _little_ bit you should _really_ let me know because I've been on tenterhooks the whole night wondering if you -"

He didn't get to finish his monologue, because Lily gave in to an impulse that had been growing inside her for much, much longer than she even realized - perhaps since the moment she had met him in her friend's office, perhaps even longer than that - and electrified them both by throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him.

He didn't even hesitate before kissing her back.

To say Lily hadn't ever experienced a kiss like it would have been an understatement. She launched herself at him as if being physically away from him was killing her and he had responded in kind, grabbing her and pulling her close to him with what was obviously deliberate minimal force due to his strength, but still roughly enough to leave finger marks on her pale, delicate skin. Every single emotion he had ever made her feel, the dislike, the seething anger, giddy butterflies that often erupted in her stomach when he smiled at her - because he had provoked a powerful reaction from her for as long as she could remember – all were manifested in one terrifyingly shocking kiss. It was beautiful, his lips were soft and warm and lovely and he was gripping her tightly, her arms, her waist, her hips – he spun her around and her back hit something solid and he had her trapped, and it was amazing. Her fingers found their way into his hair and tugged mercilessly at it as if she were trying to rip it from his scalp, their tongues clashed together every so often and it made her whole body jolt. All the wanted to do was devour him, all of him, but this being impossible she did the next best thing and threw herself into kissing him with a kind of wild, frenzied energy that was bubbling up in her veins and screaming at her to tear him apart. It relieved none of her tension, merely heightened it, and she was too scared even to breathe in case the sound of it ruined the whole moment.

It was what happened, she would come to realize, when two people had such undeniable chemistry as theirs. The only reason she hadn't known this was possible was because she had never experienced it before.

She pulled away eventually, when the whole thing overcame her, and kept her eyes closed rather than look at his face and feel embarrassed for the animalistic thing she had just done.

"Going to sleep, are you?" he murmured breathlessly. "All worn out?"

She laughed softly; her heart was jittering around in her chest. "I'm embarrassed," she admitted.

"Why?"

She sighed. "I dunno."

"Well, don't feel embarrassed," he said, and kissed her nose, a small, affectionate little gesture that made her blush, but open her eyes and gaze up at him. He smiled at her. She smiled back.

"You're still wearing your wet clothes," she said.

"I know," he said, with a laugh. "I'm probably bound for pneumonia."

"How about I go and get you something of Eddie's, from Mary's room?" she suggested, gently disentangling herself from his arms and sliding away from where he had trapped her, between him and the fridge. Moving away from him left her feeling cold and she wanted to throw herself at him again. "So you don't end up in the hospital, yeah?"

"Yeah, thanks," he said dazedly, turning around and leaning against it, watching her move towards the door with something unidentifiable in his eyes. "I'll sort my phone out and put the kettle on, yeah?"

"Yeah," she replied, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," he said. "Thank you, too."

She stood looking at him for a few moments, and he stood looking at her, but embarrassment soon caught up with her again and she slunk off down the hall in the direction of Mary's room. She didn't know whether she wanted to scream or cry or break something or jump around without restraint, because one simple kiss with him had left her racked with adrenaline, and all she wanted to do was to do it over and over again until that feeling went away. The whole evening had been so lovely and sweet, barely awkward at some points but mostly just fun and light, and Lily would have been lying had she said she wasn't madly attracted to James but that still hadn't left her prepared to be gripped by such a strong desire for him that it had left her frightened.

This _definitely_ felt like more than just a little crush to her now.

She was halfway through opening her friend's bedroom door when she stopped, turned, and walked back in the direction she had come from as if she was floating in a dream. He was standing at the sink, filling the kettle with water, humming something soft and incomprehensible under his breath. He didn't look at all out of place in her kitchen even though he had never even been there before; on the contrary, he fit in so well it was almost as if he belonged in her house. In her life, perhaps.

"James?" she said, flushed pink and breathless. He looked up from what he was doing and smiled at her and she very nearly died from the niceness of it all.

"Hmm?" he said.

She took a deep breath, shook her hair behind her shoulders and tried her very, _very_ best to look like she was brimming with confidence.

"Do you want to stay over?"

* * *

"Get up, Mary."

"Go away."

"Get _up_, Mary."

"Piss off."

"Mary," said Lily, trying her best to keep her voice at the perfect level of sweetness and devoid of the irritation that Mary was making her feel. "You're not allowed to sleep when I'm going through an emotional upheaval. I need to talk to you now."

"I'll do the tree," Mary muttered, barely comprehensible, rolling over on her side. "I'll do the tree tomorrow. It'll be great. You'll see."

"That's _not_ what I want to talk to you about," Lily hissed, yanking the covers off her friend; nothing could rouse Mary faster than having her warmth and comfort cruelly snatched away. She uncurled instantly and sat up with a shot, looking murderous; Lily had already gotten into her bed and was sitting next to her.

"I'm up, you cow, I'm _up_," she insisted sleepily, grabbing her half of the covers back. She settled them over her as she sat back against the headboard, and there was a moment's pause as she looked around and realized what was missing from the room, or to be more specific, what had been replaced by her best friend's bottom. "What happened to Eddie?"

"I put him out on the balcony," said Lily. Eddie was such a heavy sleeper that he hadn't even noticed when Lily lifted him out of Mary's bed and heartlessly left him out on the icy balcony, shivering in the freezing cold. He had already been drunk when he got to the house, if Mary's note was to be believed, so she knew that there wouldn't be any problem convincing him that he had ambled out there entirely by himself.

"S'freezing outside," Mary pointed out, settling her head against Lily's shoulder.

"I gave him a pillow," said Lily.

"Oh." There was a pause. "That's okay then."

"You're drooling on my arm."

"Wear long sleeves to bed in future," said Mary, in sleepy defiance. "What happened on your date?"

"I don't know, Mary," she said, tracing patterns on the duvet with her fingernail while Mary lazed against her shoulder. The entire evening had blown her mind. "I really don't know."

"You do know."

"I _do_ know," she agreed. "He threw his phone in a fountain."

Mary did not question why James would have taken it into his head to throw his phone into a fountain, but merely nodded. "Understandable."

"So he had to go in and get it, and we couldn't go to dinner with him soaked to the knee, so I said he could eat here. And stay here, on the sofa, you know?" she paused, and blushed in the darkness. "No funny business."

"Course," said Mary, with a yawn. "It's only polite."

To say that Lily was baffled and confused by the events of the evening would have been a gross understatement. There was a boy asleep on her sofa, an actual human male, and he wasn't an exiled Eddie nor was he some bloke whom Kenzie had brought over without her permission after a drunken night out, he was _her_ boy. At least, she was daring to think that he might be her boy. She didn't want to allow her imagination leave to run wild just yet. Maybe tomorrow she would, or in a few hours. Or five minutes from now.

"I feel funny, Mary," she said, trying her hardest not to smile. "The whole thing was bizarre."

"'Secret animal fetish' bizarre or the obvious, 'you're entirely smitten with him' bizarre?"

Lily sighed, a heavy sigh indeed. "I didn't even see him coming, Mary."

"Well," said Mary philosophically, and with another yawn. "He _can_ turn invisible, so I hear."

"He kissed me," Lily admitted, after a slight pause. "I mean, I kissed him, but he kissed me back. We kissed."

"What a dreadful bastard," said Mary, who was now starting to giggle to herself. "Did you like it?"

Lily didn't know how to say yes without dying of embarrassment, so she nodded, lightly knocking her chin against Mary's head. Mary responded by wrapping her arm clumsily around Lily's waist, and gave her a soft little squeeze.

"Don't you worry, my darling," she mumbled, sleepy and lovely and utterly perfect, as she always was. "I'll beat him up for you. Even if he does have super-powers, I'll kick him." She yawned again, and closed her eyes. "I'll kick him right in the nuts."

"You're the best, Mary," Lily sighed, closing her eyes and enveloping her friend in a hug of her own. "What on earth would I do without you?"

"Turn tricks for affection," she said. "Now shut up and let me sleep."

**A/N: I apologize for the TERRIFYING length and I **_**will**_** take care not to ramble so much next time. Forgive me?**


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Note: I got sent a few abusive private messages and emails (and a couple of fairly mean reviews) because I have taken a very long time to update this story. I know that I can be a bad updater and I truly am sorry if I've left anybody hanging, but I would like to point out that I write these stories for myself, and for my own enjoyment. My life last year was stressful and difficult and generally downright painful, and added to that the fact that I finally decided to get my head out of my bottom and write an original novel (the concept of which has been taken from this fanfiction, although it has been tweaked quite a lot – but I'm expecting you all to rush out and buy it if it ever gets published, pretty please?), I haven't been able to write fanfiction as a result. I have received some absolutely lovely reviews from people who really seem to enjoy this story, and that makes me really happy, but when I get sent abuse it makes me not want to bother writing at all. I don't think it's fair that I have to put up with that, just because I've been going through a hard time and haven't been in the right frame of mind to update my stories. I really don't want to sound ungrateful to all of the wonderful people who continue to enjoy this story, because I'm not, but it's not very nice to be sent such hateful messages.**

**(To the person who seemed to think that I was lying about my nationality – Ireland is a country with many dialects, and just because I don't speak like Father Ted, doesn't mean I'm not Irish. I don't particularly enjoy typical Irish slang and phrasing, not many people outside of Ireland would be able to understand it if I did, and I have better things to do with my time than invent a fake nationality for myself. FFS.) **

**Anyway, moving on to positive things, I've got a chapter for you all! Hurrah! There's a little bit more of Eddie in this, which I enjoy, because I enjoy Eddie (my brother, who has read this, says that Eddie is his favourite character). In my head, Eddie is Aaron Johnson, because I am a lunatic who has mentally cast famous people to play nearly every character in this story. There are fifty points and a chapter nine snippet to anyone who can guess who I've pictured for Mary.**

**This chapter is dedicated to the wonderful Jess, for the beautiful things she said about me on her Tumblr that made me cry happy tears, with all my love. It is also dedicated to one of my besties, Leonie, who totally knows the trust about Mary and therefore isn't allowed to guess. She gets free chapter snippets anyway.**

**CHAPTER EIGHT**

"I can't believe you gave him my pyjamas."

Wrapped in a fluffy white dressing gown – an early Christmas present from one of the sweet, elderly ladies who lived across the hall from Lily and Mary and doted on them both - and learning gently against the frame of the door which stood between kitchen and living room, cupping a mug of steaming hot tea in her hands, Lily rolled her eyes at the words of her friend and mumbled incomprehensible nothings under her breath. Standing directly across from her, nursing his own mug of tea, was Eddie Bones, whose bright blue eyes were twinkling with mirth, as they always did whenever he was presented with the opportunity to tease his lovely fiancée's best friend.

"So you've said."

"Actually," said Eddie, as if struck by sudden thought. "No. No. It's not that. What I can't believe is that you had _reason_ to borrow my pyjamas. I can't believe that you brought a man back to your apartment at all. It's just so… unlike you."

Lily allowed a short, humourless laugh to escape her. Her laboriously long dry spell on the romantic front had been much cause for ribbing where Eddie was concerned, and evidently he wasn't ready to let go of that particular bone. She faked a glare and wondered if Mary would be mad at her if she kicked him in the shins. Maybe she could throw her hot tea in his face. Or pick up the Christmas tree and impale him with it.

"Thinking violent thoughts again, are we?" he happily inquired, much in his element.

"Contrary to what you and Mary believe, _Edgar_," she replied loftily, knowing how much Eddie detested his given first name. "I actually am capable of communicating with attractive members of the opposite sex. My ability to speak to _you_ without difficulty may have misled you in that respect."

"I'm stunning," said Eddie, as if his masculine beauty could not ever be a topic of debate, but a mutually accepted fact. "But let's not forget the matter at hand. You didn't just bring a man back to your apartment, you let him sleep on the sofa overnight, and then you gave him _my_ pyjamas. You sneaked into your best friend's room while she was sleeping and stole her boyfriend's pyjamas like some sort of common kleptomaniac. What has this guy _done_ to you?"

"_Christ_," Lily muttered, irritably blowing strands of hair out of her face. It was too early in the morning for this. "I didn't realise it would bother you so much. Move on, Eddie, seriously. Deal with life."

"Hang on a second there, Red. Who said I was bothered?" said Eddie, flashing a brilliant smile in Lily's direction. The steam from his piping hot much of tea was rising and curling around his boyishly handsome face. "I'm not bothered at all. It's bloody brilliant, actually. The world-famous Captain Spectacular is wearing _my_ pyjamas."

"You sound like a creep, _Edgar_."

"You were the one watching him sleep, _Lily_."

Having spent a long, uncomfortable and entirely undeserved night on the balcony, Eddie had walked into the kitchen just in time to catch Lily peering into the living room in order to gaze at James, who was fast asleep on the sofa, and had immediately jumped on the scenario as a means to cheer himself up, which was why they were both, now, looming in the doorway and speaking in hushed tones. At Eddie's words, Lily's eyes immediately flashed to the slumbering man on the sofa in panic – for if he happened to hear what Eddie was saying he would probably be downright terrified – but he was still snoozing away, for which Lily was very thankful.

"I was not!" she retorted sharply, or as sharply as one _could_ retort when one was whispering, and, unmindful of what Mary might say, gave Eddie a very light kick to the shin. "I was just… I was just checking."

"Checking what?"

"Oh, I don't know," she said impatiently, clutching her mug to her chest like a hand grenade. She felt terribly flustered and embarrassed. "That he hadn't left in the night or something."

Eddie gave a rather loud and rather sudden snort of laughter that shattered the general silence of the morning, James grunted in his sleep and turned over on the sofa, and Lily's insides leapt about in terror. She grabbed Eddie by the sleeve and pulled him into the kitchen, splashing tea everywhere and, for once in her life, recklessly not caring about making a mess on the floor. This was truly a sign of just how badly Lily had lost her mind, because she usually approached kitchen messes with all the enraged determination of an irritable, hungry lioness chasing an unfortunate gazelle through the blazing Serengeti.

"Stop being so loud!" she hissed frantically. "You'll wake him up!"

"Who cares? It's morning time. He has to wake up at some point," Eddie whispered, not remotely frantically, and with a shit-eating grin on his face. "What are you talking about, anyway, checking that he hadn't left in the night? Why would he leave in the night? That's rude." He paused for a moment. "Not to mention really dramatic. Only people like MçKenzie leave in the night. He was never going to leave in the night."

"Stop saying 'leave in the night'," said Lily, attempting to remain huffy. "And take that stupid smile off your face this instant. I don't know what nonsense Mary's been telling you."

She had woken up earlier that morning feeling fresh and happy and full of life, and was then immediately struck by a sudden premonition that James had decided on a whim that he actually couldn't stand her at all and, filled with regret and disgust all at once, taken off into the darkness in order to escape her. It was exactly the kind of mental, self-conscious paranoia that Mary and Kenzie had always claimed would hit Lily in the face like a sack full of bricks on the day that she eventually _really_ liked somebody. Finding him still asleep where she had left him had given her such a fervent rush of joy that she was more than a little ashamed of herself.

"Mary told me that the two of you went on a date last night, that's all," offered Eddie promptly. "But I can see now that I was stupid to believe her lies. You never went out with anyone. You were at home all night, like you always are. A strange man broke into the house without your knowledge and fell asleep in the living room. Mary deceived me. That _bitch_."

"Sleeping on the balcony in the cold has caused an illness of the mind," said Lily coolly. "Stop having such hallucinations."

It wasn't any use pretending to be irritated, because as soon as Eddie caught her eye again she couldn't help but smile, her cheeks flushing pink with embarrassment. He grinned widely at her and reached out to ruffle her hair.

"Aw, Lily," he cooed. "You're all grown up and going out with _boys_."

"Kindly do not tousle my hair about as if I am your child when you know perfectly well that you're barely a year older than I am," said Lily delicately, holding her nose in the air. "You patronising git."

"You're _kind_ of like my child," said Eddie. "Mary's and mine; it's good practice in case we ever have one of our own. I'm quite proud of you, really."

"This coming from a man who can't wash his own clothes, turn on a vacuum cleaner or carry a teabag to the dustbin without leaving tiny puddles all over the floor?" she retorted smartly. "I'm not the infant in this situation, Edgar Bones, you are."

"Touché," said Eddie, and wandered off to put his mug in the sink. "Don't wash those pyjamas after Loverboy is finished with them, okay?"

"Why shouldn't I?"

"I'm gonna sell 'em on the internet."

"You pig."

* * *

Mary awoke very shortly after Lily and Eddie's conversation at the sitting room door, and in an uncommonly good mood, even for her. It had taken Lily aback to see her bounce into the kitchen with a pair of Lily's jeans in one hand and her white cashmere sweater in the other, and it had been even more disconcerting to have them thrown in her face, after which, Mary demanded that she shower, dress and make herself pretty as fast as she possibly could. She wanted to cook a delicious, unhealthy breakfast for everyone in the apartment, but apparently this could not be done whilst everyone was still in their pyjamas. Lily left the kitchen in some confusion, while Mary happily set about tumble drying James' clothes (that Lily had been kind enough to wash the night before) and ordering Eddie to shave his bum fluff off his face.

It was clear to Lily that Mary's sunny disposition had come about as a direct result of the events of last night, in which she was convinced she had played a vital and valiant role. Mary had spent quite a few years going on about how she couldn't wait until Lily got a 'nice, proper boyfriend' so that he and Lily and she and Eddie could 'do things together as couples', claiming vehemently that 'grown-ups do it all the time' and 'Brian doesn't count'. It was a far cry from the adolescent Mary of old who would scornfully reject any fellow who dared to so much as ask her for her phone number and refuse to trust anybody who possessed male genitalia, but then, Lily supposed, love was meant to be a transforming force.

Eddie Bones had succeeded where many others had failed when he managed to convince the elusive Mary Macdonald to be his girlfriend. They met at a motor show (dangerous vehicles being one of their shared passions) at the tender ages of nineteen and eighteen, respectively, and Mary had fancied him instantly, which meant that she became immediately abusive and tried her best to keep him as far away from her as possible, such was always the case.

Fortunately for Mary, Eddie had fancied her too, and fancied her an awful lot, for he managed to work his way into her life by remaining incredibly patient and cheerfully shouldering her many rebuffs with good grace and humour over the course of six or seven months, during which time Mary had been known to swear blind that he was just a mate and that she wasn't attracted to him and that didn't even like him all that much. When she eventually saw sense enough to agree to accompany him on an actual date, it took him all of ten seconds to win her over, and win her over in such remarkable fashion that Lily, MçKenzie, and even their respective mothers couldn't help but tease the furiously embarrassed brunette about her change of heart for well over a year.

Lily was firmly convinced that, young as they were, Mary and Eddie were for life – if for no other reason, then because nobody else would ever want to put up with either of them.

Lily often complained to Mary, and to MçKenzie, about their frequent attempts to set her up on dates and find a man for her, claiming that they were being invasive and annoying and altogether rude. If anybody else had ever slated them for it, however, Lily would have immediately jumped to their defence. In spite of their many jokes about her woefully lacking love life, the real reason that Mary and MçKenzie were so anxious for Lily to find a boyfriend was because they were desperate to find someone, _anyone_, who could convince Lily to stop taking life so seriously, lighten up, and attempt to rediscover the brighter, sunnier, happier side of herself, a side of Lily that had long since struggled to rear its head.

She had known both girls for more than a decade – Mary had grown up next door to her, and MçKenzie they had met in school - and they had known her for who she used to be, a cheerful, vivacious, witty young woman, one who truly enjoyed her life. They had seen her transform into a dreary shadow of herself once she and Brian had become involved, and they had witnessed her struggle to regain her sense of self after they broke up. The events of a year ago, which MçKenzie was still yet to learn about, had not helped matters much.

Between the two of them, in spite of the fact that Mary knew the truest reasons behind Lily's transformation, and Kenzie didn't, both had tried everything they could to help their friend find some joy in life again, because she wasn't happy, and hadn't been happy for a long time, but nothing ever seemed to work. The resulting conclusion was that the girls were left feeling as if they had failed their dearest friend and Lily was left simmering in her own self-loathing, despising herself for her inability to bounce back on a whim and feeling as if Mary and MçKenzie deserved a better friend than her. It was, therefore, really no wonder that both girls had begun to pin their hopes on Lily finding a nice new boyfriend; every other option had simply been exhausted – although, this fact didn't stop them from trying.

Her friends were loud, obnoxious, and sometimes terribly embarrassing, but there was no denying that their hearts were in the right place, that they loved her, and above all, that they desired only her happiness.

They were good girls; the best of girls. Lily wouldn't ever think of swapping them.

* * *

"I want my food," Eddie groaned, in a fine imitation of agony, and banged his knife and fork against the table. "Hurry up, woman."

In what Mary seemed to think was a charming display of domestic bliss, but more closely resembling a poorly written situation comedy, Lily, James and Eddie were gathered around the kitchen table, waiting patiently for the lady of the house to dish up their breakfast. Lily had followed her grooming instructions to the letter, Eddie had shaved, and James had been roused from his slumber by a completely unnecessary prank on Mary's part, for she had thought it hilarious to stick a hair up his nose and tickle him awake, in spite of Lily's refusal to support such a scheme. Meanwhile, Eddie's plan to make fun of Lily all morning long had been abandoned when Mary threatened to place a kibosh on all physical intimacies if he even dared try. He had moaned and complained and accused her of playing favourites, but his good humour soon returned upon hearing that his fiancée intended to make streaky bacon.

This was nothing at all like a regular Sunday morning for Lily and Mary, but Mary seemed to be of the opinion that James needed to be convinced that both girls lived idyllic, disciplined, Stepford-bride lives, which was exactly how she had acted when she and Eddie were first dating, although she had never thought Brian worthy of such trickery. A regular Sunday morning for the girls mostly consisted of both languishing in the living room in ratty pyjamas and with unwashed hair, watching terrible movies and dropping soggy cereal all over themselves while Eddie rolled around in Mary's bed and complained about his hangover to no avail, because the girls would always ignore him. Alternatively, Mary would sit next to Eddie in bed and ignore him to his face while Lily raced around the city apprehending criminals, although this was happily quite rare, as most people were too busy sleeping in on a Sunday morning to bother assaulting people or robbing cash from smoothie bars.

"Shut your trap, you stupid arse," said Mary blithely, advancing on the assembled diners with a frying pan in one hand and a spatula in the other. She smiled at James, who was sitting next to Lily, and turned her attentions to him first. "Would you like some sausages, James? Fried eggs, maybe? Do you like streaky bacon? There's toast on the way, if you fancy it."

"Oh, yeah, thanks, that all sounds great," said James, blinking a little at Mary's rapid-fire questioning concerning his breakfast preferences.

"Why does James get offered his breakfast first? I'm the one you're marrying," Eddie pretended to complain, but without any conviction. He and James had discovered, to their mutual delight, that they supported the same football team, and this was apparently enough of a foundation upon which two men could build a lifelong friendship.

"James is a guest here, fool," said Mary, with both sweetness and condescension in her tone. "_You're_ an irritating permanent installation. Are you sure you want some of everything?" she pressed on, and waved the spatula like a flag. It narrowly avoided hitting Eddie in the face. "I know you're keen to impress me to get in good with Lillers, but I don't want you eating something you don't like on _my_ account."

"You made me eat Lily's chocolate sponge cake," Eddie reminded her, in between dodging the flailing spatula. Mary stopped waving it, but her eyes flashed warningly, and Lily knew that she was dying to smack Eddie for talking down Lily's – admittedly terrible – previous efforts in baking in front of James. Lily, on the other hand, wasn't particularly bothered. He could have said a lot worse, and it barely rated when compared to the newspaper clippings that her friend had slathered all over the fridge.

"Lily's chocolate sponge cake was a _dream_, Eddie."

"It was burned on the outside."

"It was supposed to be burned on the outside."

"You had to cut the edges off just to get at the actual cake part," said Eddie, unmindful of the fact that Mary was shooting daggers at him. "And you only did that for your own slice. She made _me_ eat the whole thing," he added resentfully, with a meaningful look at James. "Blackened crust and all, and then it turned out that Lily didn't even care if I liked it or not."

"I didn't," Lily put in, with a giggle, while Mary doled bacon and sausages onto everyone's plates. "If the way to win my approval was to enjoy my cooking, I'd never be able to approve of anybody."

"Last night you made beans on toast and they were alright," James pointed out, turning from Eddie to gaze at her curiously, and with the faintest hint of a smirk around the corners of his mouth. Lily succeeded in not blushing, but she couldn't help but smile at him, oblivious of just how brightly she had lit up under his gaze, even though her shiny new glow was painfully obvious to the friends who knew her best. She was vaguely aware that Mary had walked off to get the eggs and toast, and Eddie was probably still there, somewhere. James made it difficult for her to pay much attention to anybody else.

"My one talent," she admitted.

"You said you were an expert cook, when you were making them last night."

"Did I?" She feigned ignorance and started to cut up her sausages, but James was still looking at her, so she shrugged and pretended to look ashamed of herself. "I lied."

"That's alright," said James happily, and turned to his own breakfast. Lily tried to pretend that she didn't see the indulgent, knowing smiles that passed between Mary and Eddie. "I lied when I said that you were getting better at Pacman."

"Relationships are founded on lies, don't worry about it," Eddie assured them both. Lily _did_ blush at that, as she had absolutely no clue if she was in a relationship with James, on the verge of being in a relationship with James, or nowhere near close to being in a relationship with him, but Eddie had not noticed his mistake. "Mary still believes me when I tell her that I like her mother."

"Eddie still believes me when I tell him that I like _him_," said Mary, transferring Eddie's egg from frying pan to plate with more force than necessary. She gestured with the spatula for Lily and James to take what they wanted from the steaming rack of toast she had set down beneath their noses. "Tuck in, Lillers, don't wait for me to sit down; I still have to tend to the tea and coffee. You look so fresh and pretty this morning, darling."

"Don't I always?" said Lily wryly, with a comical roll of her eyes.

"No," said Eddie flatly, with a snort of amusement. "She looks like a swamp creature most mornings, drooling and snivelling all over the place."

"Shut _up_, you idiot, or I'll knock you unconscious with this pan," Mary threatened, holding the spatula aloft in a rather frightening manner. "And I mean that. I don't care _what_ superhero may or may not be sitting in this room to witness it happen and send me to prison."

"Oh, don't worry about that," said James, holding hands in the air. "You scored me a date last night, _and_ you've made me breakfast, it's a free pass on the domestic abuse for the morning."

"Consider my approval won, Potter," said Mary approvingly, and gave James a little salute before she walked away to fetch the teapot.

"So much for male solidarity," said Eddie, through a masticated mouthful of bacon.

"Sorry, mate," said James, with an apologetic shrug. "I'm just trying to get in good with her friend. You're still my number one."

Eddie gave him the thumbs up, Mary laughed from her station by the oven and James looked once again at Lily, with a grin and a cheeky little wink meant just for her. Her heart did somersaults and flutters and something like anxiety stirred in the pit of her stomach, even as she rejoiced in the knowledge that all persons present were getting along swimmingly. As grateful as she was to Mary and Eddie for trying to make James feel at home, it was somewhat torturous to be in sitting so close to James, but not to be alone with him. It was strange to think that only twenty-four hours before she wouldn't have dreamed of being in this situation, but even stranger to acknowledge that there was a part of her, a shamefully large part, that had secretly been hoping for an outcome like this, the very same part of her that dearly wished that Mary and Eddie could remember some urgent appointment and dash away. Lily and James had spent the greater part of the previous night kissing – only kissing – and as tame an activity as this was, she had not been able to think of much else since, and desperately wanted to be given the chance to do it again.

"Right," announced Mary, marching over to the table with both the teapot and the cafetiere. "That's everything done, and I'm sitting down before my breakfast goes cold. If anybody needs anything, else they can bloody well get it themse -"

She stopped mid-sentence. Somebody was knocking on their door, but not softly, as James had done the night before. Whoever was knocking was knocking loudly and with evident purpose, as if determined to get the attention of both girls and bring them to the door. Mary looked at Lily confusedly; she frowned in return, and wondered if the doorman had become complacent in letting people in and out of the building lately.

"That wouldn't be your publicist, would it?" said Lily to James, brow furrowed.

"Don't think so," he replied, after hastily swallowing a mouthful of egg. "Did you or Mary give her this address?"

"No," said Mary softly, and instead of sitting at the table, she backed away from it and headed towards the living room. "And Lily definitely wouldn't have."

She headed into the living room and silence fell upon the three left at the table as, unable to see what was going on, they listened to discern just who exactly had decided to turn up uninvited at Mary and Lily's apartment at eleven in the morning. Their parents most certainly would have called first, and MçKenzie had never been known to rise from her bed before midday on a Sunday. The front door was opened and Lily waited to hear Mary utter a greeting, or enquire after the purpose of the stranger's visit, but not a word was spoken. Instead, she heard Mary call out in anger, and before Lily could even get up from her chair, Brian Costelloe walked into the kitchen with a very poorly wrapped Christmas present in hand. He was followed quickly by Mary, who was looking furious.

"He pushed right past me when I opened the door!" she exclaimed, rubbing her elbow, upon which a large red mark had begun to form. "He didn't even ask to be let in!"

If Brian's sudden arrival at the apartment had come as a shock to Lily, it was nothing compared to his appearance. Before, he had always been neat and well-presented, but now, he was unkempt and unshaven, his clothes creased and dirty, and the smell that emanated from his person was one of alcohol and sweat. His eyes had a glazed look about them, and as he gazed at Lily with something close to abhorrence, it was clear that he was angry, and clear that he hadn't yet noticed that there was anyone else in the room.

She tried to speak, but she couldn't say anything. His arrival had robbed her of the power of speech, and she was left silent, seemingly stuck to her chair, and at a complete loss for anything to do or say. All she could think about was James, and how even now he had probably already worked out from where he had seen Brian before, and how she needed to get rid of her drunken ex-boyfriend before he caused a tremendous amount of trouble for her. She looked desperately to Mary, who caught her eye and, seeming to understand, made to say something, but was beaten to the punch by Brian.

"I haven't heard from you in ages," he accused, breathless but surprisingly succinct, for Lily had half expected him to slur his words. "Since you weren't going to call me I thought I'd give you your Christmas present myself. Look," he added pointlessly, thrusting the gift out in front of him. "Merry Christmas, _darling_."

"That's great, Brian. Why don't you give it to me and go home to bed?" said Mary tersely. Lily could tell that she was desperate to punch him across the face, and under normal circumstances she probably would have done it, but Lily knew that she, also, was worried about the repercussions of angering him further, for it could only be a matter of seconds before he caught sight of James and jumped to the same conclusion that any jealous ex would have jumped to, the _true_ conclusion, no less.

"I'll go home when Lily and I have had a word," he said obstinately. "As I said, I haven't heard from her in a while, and as she _did_ promise that she and I would remain _friends_, I think I'm within my rights to-"

"You look tired," Mary pressed on. "You should probably get some sleep." She made to take the present from Brian and steer him gently out of the kitchen, but upon feeling her hand rest upon his shoulder he shouted something incomprehensible and swung around, making to push her, but she backed away quickly. At the same time, Eddie and James rose to their feet.

"It's alright! Leave him be!" Lily exclaimed, also rising to her feet, suddenly stricken by terror. She held a placatory hand out towards James and Eddie, who both looked as if they were gearing up to forcibly remove Brian from the apartment. If Brian hadn't been capable of spilling her secret to James at that moment, and potentially ruining everything, she would have allowed them to do it, but as it was, she had decided that the best course of action would be to let him cool off and send him on his way, perhaps with a vague promise to contact him later. "He's not violent; he just needs a second to calm down."

"Yeah, you heard her," said Brian to Mary, under that Lily was speaking to her, and staggered back around to look at Lily. "She _wants_ to talk to me. _You_ never liked me. _You're_ the one who told her to break it off, don't think I don't-"

He had caught sight of James, standing next to his ex-girlfriend, and in an instant, the change in expression that came over Brian's face was so markedly sinister that Lily, had her circumstances been different, might have been afraid of him.

"What's _he_ doing here?" he spat, his eyes narrowed.

"He's a friend of ours," said Mary.

"He rescued her!" cried Eddie triumphantly, at the exact same time, but his confident expression faltered as Mary, Lily and James all turned to look at him with incredulous eyes. "From a... bear."

Brian, however, had eyes only for James, and he seemed to have figured out the truth for himself.

"She doesn't like you," he whispered venomously, and then, looking to Lily with every sign of great dislike, added. "You don't like him."

"I think you should go, mate," said James, in a low voice. Lily looked up at him. His voice was calm, was staring at the inebriated Brian with a look of steely determination in his eyes. "You're upsetting Lily, and I'm sure you don't want to upset her."

Too incensed to care that he was now squaring off with a man who could easily subdue him with one hand, Brian ignored this request. "I was her boyfriend for three years."

"That's great," James replied. "I'm sure Lily will talk to you when you've gone home and sobered up."

"Has this been going on behind my back the whole time?" Brian sneered, showing absolutely no sign of wanting to leave. On the contrary, he was getting angrier and angrier, and it appeared as if he might soon be provoked to punch somebody. "Was she just pretending not to like you so I wouldn't notice? Lying to me? Is that the thanks I get for everything I've done?"

"Nobody's been lying to you!" Mary snapped. "She doesn't want you here, Brian. Go home!"

"Is that it?" Brian continued, as if Mary wasn't even there. "Have you been laughing at me behind my back? Do you think it's funny? You won't make a fool out of me, I'll show you funny. I'll show you."

He lunged. Lily had expected it, but her fear of discovery prevented what should have been her natural reaction, and instead of throwing herself over the table to fend him off, she took a step backwards. As it happened, she didn't need to defend herself, because in the space of a split second and a flash of colour, James wasn't standing by her side any longer, rather, he was on the other side of the kitchen, and Brian was struggling helplessly in his grip. Mary and Eddie both turned wildly around, disoriented, unused to witnessing such a thing, and even Lily, who had done such a thing before, was taken aback by just how _quickly_ it all had happened, and it occurred to her that James was faster, possibly, probably, than even she was.

"I think it's time I took you home," said James to Brian, who was struggling and mumbling and muttering, but otherwise quiet, having perhaps been stunned into silence. "Don't you?"

"Oh, no, no, don't put yourself out like that," Lily implored, her heart constricting at the thought of what Brian might say to James if they were alone together. "I can drive him. I can borrow Mary's car. It's fine."

"You mad, Evans?" said James, looking at Lily as if she had lost her mind. "You think I'd let you cart this lunatic home, all by yourself?"

"I'll be fine, James, honestly," she insisted, and shot Mary an anxious glance before continuing. "You just stay here and finish your breakfast and I'll-"

"Peter?"

Everyone turned in the direction James was staring at. Two men were standing in the doorway to the kitchen, unnoticed until now, watching the scene in front of them with undisguised interest. Lily recognised them both immediately as two of the other Marauders, Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew, although both were dressed in regular clothes, and Peter had not donned his traditional mask. It was the first time Lily had seen his face without it.

"Er, hello," said one of the new additions, waving awkwardly to everyone assembled in the kitchen. Eddie and Lily said nothing and Mary waved back rather dazedly. "Sorry about the intrusion. We would have knocked, but the door was open and we heard yelling. I'm Peter," he finished, quite needlessly, for everyone present already knew his name. He looked to Lily, and a bright smile spread across his chubby, pleasant face. "You must be the lovely Lily, yes? James has told us such a lot about-"

"_Peter_," said Remus.

"Sorry, sorry. I, eh, again, sorry about the intrusion, but we needed to speak to James for a bit."

"We tried phoning you," said Remus, looking terribly apologetic. "But it kept going to voicemail."

"My phone broke last night," James explained, barely paying any attention to Brian, who was trying to stomp on his toes. He looked suddenly worried, and Lily knew he was thinking of his father. "Is something wrong?"

"Oh, no, well, yes, something's wrong, but it's not…" Peter trailed off, looked at Mary, Eddie and Lily, and coughed, looking uncomfortable. "There's been a... well, a crime. I'm not really at liberty to discuss it in public, but…"

"Sirius is examining the scene," Remus cut in, lest Peter give something away. "And he wanted me to fetch you."

"Oh," said James. "Oh, right." Lily could see the relief in his eyes. She had a feeling that she knew what James was being called to investigate with Sirius, and if she was correct, it was a horrible, terrible thing, but she also knew how badly James would have felt if his father had fallen ill again and he had been unreachable for the whole night. "I was actually going to bring this guy home. He got a little out of hand."

"Yeah, we were outside the building and we heard," said Peter.

"I can take him home, if you like," Remus offered, bringing the conversation back to the matter at hand, which was getting Brian home and getting James to wherever Sirius was. "It's meant to be Peter's day off, and you know how Sirius gets. Perhaps Lily could come with me? You're the only one of us who knows where he lives, after all," he added, looking to Lily with an amiable smile.

"Oh," said Lily, taken aback.

"You don't mind, do you?" said Remus to Lily, and when she shook her head, continued. "I'm under strict instruction to talk James up to you, and this is the only way I knew how to wangle it."

"Thanks, Remus," said James, glowing pink.

"You're very welcome."

"You lot examine crime scenes, too?" said Eddie confusedly. "Like, the way actual detectives do?"

"Well, yeah," said Peter, as if this should have been known already.

"Why?"

"Sirius has a particularly well developed sense of smell," said James, darkly, looking a little peeved, possibly that his best friend had demanded his presence.

"He's sort of like a sniffer dog," said Peter. "It helps."

"And he doesn't like doing anything without James," Remus finished.

"Even when he knows I've made other plans."

"Let go of me!" shouted Brian who, having apparently shaken off the shock of being forcibly set upon by a world famous superhero, had regained his voice and anxious to be heard once more. "Let go of me! I want to talk to Lily!"

"I'll handle that," said Peter, and walked over to James and Brian, the latter still struggling fruitlessly to escape. He placed his hands on either side of Brian's head and all of a sudden, inexplicably, the dishevelled drunkard was deeply asleep on his feet, his body relaxed and his head lolling to the side as he snored peacefully away. He looked as serene and as comfortable as if he had been slumbering for hours.

"Be as loud as you like," said Peter, quite at ease upon seeing the looks of utter surprise on Mary, Eddie and even Lily's faces. "He won't wake up until he's fully rested."

Mary looked at Lily, and Lily at once knew what she was thinking, but she was as in the dark about it as her friend was. Not once had Lily discovered herself to be capable of such a feat, and she had never known the Marauders to be capable of it either.

"How did you do that?" she breathed, her eyes transfixed upon Peter, who was looking a little pleased with himself. "I didn't know that you could do that!"

"That's Peter's particular ability," said Remus, by way of explanation, while James hurriedly placed Brian on the floor in order to escape a trail of drool that was now dripping from the sleeping man's mouth. "We all have one or two abilities that the rest of us don't possess. James hasn't told you about his, I assume?"

"No," said Lily, quite aghast. She decided against mentioning the fact that James had only last night promised not to mention his superhuman alter ego to her. "Why, what it is?"

Everybody looked at James, who looked at Remus with an expression of pure annoyance, who shrugged, and placed his hands in his pockets, looking amused. With a great sigh, as if to demonstrate to Lily just how disinclined he was to show off, he took hold of Mary's arm – as she was nearest – and the two of them vanished before Lily's very eyes.

"Holy shit! Where'd they go?" Eddie cried.

"You're invisible!" Mary's voice came from seemingly nowhere.

"So are you," said James, as he and Mary reappeared in the same spot.

"He only realised that he can take people with him when he turns invisible about three years ago," said Peter, smiling at the look of surprise on Lily's face.

"It suits his character very well," said Remus, while James looked supremely embarrassed. "He's always been quite protective of others."

"And what about the other one?" said Eddie, scratching the back of his head. "Sirius, was it?"

"He has that flying motorbike," put in Mary.

"Nah," said James, with a short laugh. "The motorbike doesn't fly, Sirius does. He's just strong enough to make it look as if it's carrying him, and not the other way around. Although, don't tell him I told you that," he added, with a comical grimace.

"Is it just his sense of smell, then?"

"Sirius can make objects move without touching them," Peter explained. "Telekinesis, I think they call it."

"A power that also befits his personality," said Remus. "Considering how lazy he is."

He also claims that he can invoke lust in all legal aged people, but I think that might be a lie."

"Peter claims that he can make sandwiches with his mind," put in Remus, with a wry smile.

"Only when nobody's looking," said Peter moodily. "James says that he can make people trip over just by looking at them."

"That one's true," said James quickly.

"Really?" said Eddie brightly. "Can you make _me_ trip over?"

"Shut up, Eddie," said Mary, digging him in the ribs. "Rescued from a _bear_, honestly."

"Can any of you," Lily began, but then faltered, as five sets of eyes turned towards her. "Can any of you… set things on fire?"

Lily had discovered, quite by accident, that she had the ability to generate fire out of nowhere, some weeks after she had originally obtained her powers. It had been a shocking discovery, one that almost burned down the apartment, but she had assumed, as had Mary, that if she could do it, the rest of the Marauders could do it, too. The idea that she might be the only one, that she had something special about her, too, gave her a funny little thrill.

"I don't think so," said Peter, with a shrug. "I'm sure if one of us could, we would have known by now. Did somebody tell you that we could?"

"Oh," said Lily, and tried not to look too delighted. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that Mary was suppressing a laugh. "Kenzie might have mentioned it, but you know how she exaggerates."

"Indeed, we're all aware of that," said Remus, cheerfully. "I suppose we'd all best get moving, then. James, Sirius is likely to throw a tantrum if you don't turn up soon."

"Yeah," said James. "Yeah, I suppose."

He made no move to leave the room, rather looked at Lily, appearing awkward, and it struck her that this was not the goodbye she would have liked to have, standing in front of four other people, and that this thought had probably just occurred to him, as well.

"I'll be seeing you soon, then, yeah?" he said, and even though he was under the scrutiny of curious others, Lily couldn't miss the hopeful tone in his voice, and her insides flooded with something warm and sunny and delicious, and she beamed at him, not caring for the moment that she was blushing and that other people could see.

"Yeah, really soon," she enthused, and Mary began to giggle. "You could drop by later, if you wanted, or whenever you're not busy."

"I'd really like that," he said, warmly returning her smile. Lily noticed Peter sidling skilfully out of the room. "I'll call you when I'm done here, yeah?"

"I already gave him your phone number," Mary put in. "It was lovely having you here, James."

"Yeah, mate," said Eddie. "It was great meeting you."

"You too. Thanks," said James, his embarrassment now evident. "For the breakfast, and for everything else. I'll see you all later, I suppose."

Mary and Eddie grinned, their arms around one another, like a two-headed Cheshire cat. Lily determinedly avoided the eyes of both as she bade goodbye to James, who looked as if he wanted to kiss her and thought better of it, but then, to her utter delight, changed his mind, and swooped down on her to give the swiftest and sweetest of kisses. He straightened up and grinned at her, and she grinned back, feeling giddy, this time definitely not caring what anybody else thought.

"Shut it, you," said James to Remus, who looked as if he might want to laugh, as he walked by him. He crossed the living room floor and left, shutting the apartment door behind him, and Lily was left blushing and flustered in front of Remus, Mary, Eddie, and Brian, who was still asleep, and by now had left a puddle of saliva on the kitchen floor.

"Well, now that's done, I think it's time to get this fellow home," said Remus tactfully, and strode over to where Brian lay crumpled up in the corner of the room. "My car is outside, so it should be no trouble."

He bent to hoist Brian up on his shoulder, and at that moment something important, something potentially horrible, struck Lily out of nowhere, and before she knew what she was doing she had called out for him to wait. He stopped, and turned about to look at her, frowning ever so slightly.

"Sorry," said Lily, and she flushed with embarrassment over her outburst. "I just… well, what about you?"

Remus blinked. "Pardon?"

"When you were talking about your individual powers, you never told us yours," she explained, red-faced, trying not to look as if it was a matter of much importance. "I was curious, I suppose. What's your… what's your particular ability?"

There was a pause, during which time Remus gazed steadfastly back at Lily with a shrewd, knowing, unnerving expression in his kindly grey eyes, and it made her anxious, and for some reason she knew, without knowing, exactly what he was going to say, before he even opened his mouth to say it.

"I can read minds," he said simply. "Shall we get going?"


	9. Chapter 9

**Author's Note: I would like to dedicate this chapter in its entirety to the amazing Julia, who on this site goes by the name of Light Under My Skin. She knows why.**

* * *

**Chapter Nine**

"Well," said Lily flatly. "This isn't what I would have expected from a Marauder."

She and Remus were sitting in the front of his car, a dusky blue, modest little Fiat. It was fairly old and befitted a student driver, not a wealthy young man, particularly not a man as famous as Remus Lupin. He had carried Brian to the car on his shoulder as if he weighed no more than a throw pillow, and left him propped up and belted in the back.

Brian's head lolled to the side as he snored, drooling. It brought back unwanted memories of Lily's previous relationship with him.

"It's probably not a fashionable opinion, but I do love this car," said Remus, and fastened his own seatbelt. "I bought her from a used car dealership when I first learned to drive. She's served me well and I've grown rather attached to her. I can't say I've got the heart to buy another."

"I can understand that." It was a nice car. It didn't have a funny smell like some old cars did, and she had spied a bag of sweets in the glove compartment. "If something's not broken, why replace it?"

"I feel the same, but Sirius refuses to be seen in it." Remus started the engine with a chuckle. "He claims it would be detrimental to his dark and mysterious image."

He pulled out of his space and drove towards the entrance of the parking area. It was meant to be for tenants only, but Lily supposed being a Marauder meant that one lived by one's own rules. Lily told him to turn left and racked her brains trying to think of a way to continue their current conversation for the next ten minutes. Anything, even talking about cars, would be better than discussing what she suspected Remus might want to discuss. Cars were Mary's thing, but Lily was willing to pretend she loved them if it meant not coming clean about her powers.

"Sirius prefers the flying motorcycle that can't actually fly, right?" She giggled nervously, a worrying sign because she never giggled, but Remus either didn't notice or was too polite to say anything.

"You know him so well already."

"He doesn't seem difficult to figure out, to be honest."

"Perhaps on the surface." Remus turned the car around at the intersection. "It might shock his devoted fans if there were to learn that he has a secret obsession with online roleplaying games, for example. Not that he does, of course," he added wryly. "Just don't mention

"On the surface, perhaps," Remus agreed, turning the car around at the intersection. "It might shock his devoted fans if they were to learn that he had a secret obsession with online roleplaying games, for example. Not that he _does_, of course," he added, with a wry smile. "Never mention the name _Dramorion the Sexy_ to him."

"And what about Peter and James?" Lily asked. "Do they value their reputations as much as Sirius does his?"

"Peter owns very many impressive cars, all of which are big and obnoxious," Remus provided, grinning. "He looks ridiculous in all of them, especially the Range Rover. On the other hand, I'm not even sure if James has a car. He really likes flying, you see, flying and running. I think he might have a bicycle. He likes being active. He finds it difficult to sit still sometimes."

This description of James made Lily feel warm inside.

"I think I'd like _this_ car a lot more than a Range Rover or a masquerading motorcycle," she said, being disinclined to take pleasure in anything that was overly flashy. "I suppose it's not going to last forever, though."

"Probably not," Remus admitted, and patted the car's spotlessly clean dashboard. "Hopefully, it'll continue to function for the next few years, because I can't afford to buy a new one at the moment."

"You _can't_?" Assuming that this was a joke, Lily forgot her manners and laughed outright, neglecting to consider that she might have been acting quite rudely. "You have to be joking. You can, surely?"

"I assure you, I definitely can't," said Remus solemnly, and Lily immediately felt guilty, and wondered if she hadn't just offended him somehow. Then he glanced at her, and it was clear that she had simply amused him with her incredulity. "You can't be blamed, of course, for assuming the opposite."

The knowledge that Remus was, apparently, not wealthy enough to purchase a new car came as a great shock to Lily. The night before, James had told her a little about each of their families and childhoods, and she knew for a fact that Lyall Lupin was the managing director of a large conglomerate which owned several successful manufacturing companies. Lily had also learned that James came from old money. His mother Dorea was an heiress whose wealth accounted for all of his family's fortune, and surprisingly, his father, Charlus, was a retired teacher of no real importance in high society. Peter's parents were senior partners at a multinational law firm. The four boys had met as children in an exclusive private school, and had grown up together. All four were very wealthy, but it had appeared to Lily as if Remus Lupin's family were the richest of all.

"I'm so sorry," she said, squirming like a worm on a hook. "You must think I'm vulgar. James told me about your families last night, and I just assumed without thinking."

"You assumed correctly, there's no need to apologise." The stopped at a set of traffic lights and he smiled at her. "There was a trust fund that was made available to me, had I been inclined to take it, but ultimately I decided against it."

Once again, Lily was shocked and ashamed of herself for having judged James and his friends so harshly and for such a long time. Lately, it seemed as if all the Marauders did was surprise her and she was discovering that all of the cruel and biased assumptions she had once held dear were one by one coming to nothing in rapid succession. It was nice to know that she was wrong, but it also forced the question of whether she needed to take a closer look at herself.

"Would it offend you if I asked why?"

"Not at all," said Remus. "Simply put, I'm not a great supporter of the way wealth is distributed in the world, and as I consider myself fit and able to earn my own keep I thought it best that the money in my trust fund be put to better use. I had eighteen years' worth of savings when I moved out of my parents' home, which was enough to cover my rent, bills and food for a handful of years. I'm not terribly extravagant, either, so I rub along quite nicely."

"Wow," said Lily. "That's very noble of you."

"That's a very kind thing to say, but you mustn't think too highly of me," said Remus. "I'm not completely insensible to the benefits of my family's fortune. I allowed my parents to pay for college."

"College?" She had never heard of any of the Marauders seeking any form of higher education, and James had certainly not mentioned it. "Are you in college now?"

"I was in college until this summer," Remus confirmed. "I decided to take a year off after I graduated, but I'll be starting medical school next September."

"Seriously?" Lily gaped. It was an unattractive look for her. "But you're always so busy with, well, being a Marauder. How will you find the time to study? How _did_ you find the time to study?"

"Sometimes it's difficult." Brian's apartment complex loomed ahead of them. "We made the decision to do this with our lives as teenagers, when we really didn't know any better. None of us considered the possibility that we might want to lead lives of our own one day, so we had to start allowing ourselves to have time off as we got older. That's why we work to a schedule, although once I'm qualified as a doctor I might have to give it up entirely."

"That's incredible," Lily breathed, truly impressed. "And the other boys don't mind?"

"Nobody minded when James and I were in college and had to take large chunks of time off to study," said Remus reflectively. "Well, Izzie minded, but she's crazy. Balancing the work that we do along with school was a struggle, but I think the two of us managed quite well."

Lily stared at Remus as he parked the car in Brian's complex. She stared at him as he checked his mirrors. She stared at him until he looked at her again, and he laughed at the look on her face.

"I'll take your stunned silence to indicate that you didn't already know that James is also a college graduate," he said, and unbuckled his seatbelt. "I'm not surprised. We enrolled under pseudonyms and took a lot of classes online. It was never widely known. The last thing either of us wanted was a stampede of fans interrupting a class."

"No, I didn't." Lily felt as if someone had boxed her ears. "He didn't mention it to me last night. I wonder why he didn't."

"James is afraid to reveal the best of himself to you because he's afraid that you'll think he's conceited," said Remus flatly, but not unkindly. "You'll know that he's anything but after spending an evening with him, but he won't listen to reason at the moment. I blame Sirius for indulging him in his foolishness."

Shame was throwing a party in Lily's brain. She was suddenly struck by a new fear – that Remus might think her indifferent to his friend, or that she was leading him on with intent to hurt him later. She had spent three years in a relationship with someone she didn't much care for and she hated the idea that James might think she felt the same way about him, because she didn't, she most definitely didn't.

She silently resolved to let James know that she had come to think highly of him if he still wanted to speak to her. After Brian's antics this morning she wouldn't have blamed James if he went running for the hills. She probably would have in similar circumstances.

"I'll just get him upstairs," said Remus, interrupting her thoughts. "I won't be long, you can listen to the radio while you wait if you like."

Lily nodded, chewing on a strand of her own hair. It was only when Remus had removed Brian and the shabbily wrapped Christmas present from the back of the car that she came to her senses, leaned over the driver's seat and stuck her head out of the window.

"I don't think James is conceited," she said, blinking in the sunlight that shone on her face. "I think he's lovely. I think he's _wonderful_. He's the nicest man I've ever met, not even saving your presence, and I'd hate for him to think otherwise."

"Then you're clearly a very perceptive person," replied Remus, with a smile that was all warmth and goodness. "I'll be back in a flash."

* * *

"You didn't have any trouble getting him in, did you?"

"Not a bit." Remus slid into the driver's seat and shut the door behind him. "He's still asleep and likely to stay that way for a few hours."

"Peter did his job well."

"Are you alright?" Remus looked at her with some concern. "That was a nasty scene this morning."

"I'm fine, don't worry about that, it's not a big deal. He'll be so embarrassed when he sobers up that he'll know better than to do something like that ever again."

That was a lie. Lily was fairly sure that it was a big deal, but Remus wasn't the person with whom she wanted to discuss it. Brian's behaviour was becoming increasingly erratic. Mary had muttered something about pressing charges before Lily and Remus left the apartment and Lily knew she was due for a battle later when she would try to convince her not to, because Brian was much too helpful in her secret life. But a small voice reminded her that Brian had never been a big drinker and he had certainly never been violent, and that Mary might have been on to something when she claimed that he was starting to lose it. If Lily was to report him he would lose this job, though, and she didn't want that on her conscience. She had hurt him enough already.

"An old boyfriend of yours?"

"Yes," Lily muttered shamefacedly, as if admitting to armed robbery. "We were together for three years before I ended it. It was the right decision because we weren't right for each other, but I'm not sure if I treated him as well as I should have." She sighed. Talking about Brian made her feel old. "I've apologised more times than I can count, but it still makes me feel like a terrible person."

"You're supposed to make those mistakes when you're young," said Remus wisely. "If you really were a terrible person, you wouldn't feel so badly about it now."

"Thank you for saying that."

"You're very welcome," he replied. "Have you been apart for long?"

"Too long for him to still be acting like this. I broke up with him over a year ago, in May. I really thought he'd have moved on by now, and met someone new."

"I see." Remus was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, and it occurred to Lily at that moment that he had not yet started the car. "And may I ask, did this separation happen before or after you came to acquire superhuman abilities?"

It didn't matter that she'd been expecting it; the shock hit her like she'd been doused with ice water.

Her heart fluttered erratically, as if it were struggling to escape the situation. She felt dizzy.

"Lily?" Remus sounded far away, as if he were outside the car and the windows were closed.

She didn't answer because she would say the wrong thing, or cry, or shout at him, all three were possible.

Remus Lupin knew that she had powers, which meant that James would know or knew already, and if he knew already it meant that she had originally been right about him. She had been right to assume that he would expose her, laugh, jeer, and make it impossible for her to live her life without bearing the intolerable intrusion of constant public scrutiny.

As quick as the idea came, she rejected it. She couldn't believe that of James any longer. He must not have known and that was worse, for he would soon discover that Remus was keeping it secret, and he would be hurt and angry. She would be responsible for damaging their friendship and lose any chance she had of being with him, but then, what chance did she have anyway? She was the one who had lied from the beginning and allowed her ignorant hatred of his public persona to prevent her from trusting him with that information, as she should have done. Now she was to be branded a liar and public exposure would undoubtedly follow. People would know her name.

_He_ would know her name. That man. That awful, terrifying man. He would finally know, and could find her if he wanted. Knowing that he didn't have her name had been her one consolation for a year. She had only just begun to feel sure that she would never see him again, and now…

Remus laid a hand on her arm and her reflexes must have abandoned her, because she jumped with fright. He was looking at her with great concern.

"You're white as a sheet. Please don't be upset." His tone was contrite and he looked as if he sincerely regretted his words, although she saw no reason for him to feel that way. "I only asked you because I wanted to offer you an apology."

Lily blinked.

"An apology?" Her own voice sounded so very strange. "What do you have to apologise for?"

"It doesn't give me pleasure to invade the minds of other people," Remus explained, his voice low and serious. "I can only imagine how pained and humiliated I would feel to know that someone had delved into my private thoughts, and I don't make a habit out of doing it. I've felt terribly about looking into yours for a very long time, but if you'll allow me to explain I'd like to tell you why I disregarded my own rule in your case, and again offer you a sincere apology, which you quite rightfully deserve."

Of all possible scenarios, she had not expected this. She felt as if she should have been begging him to forgive her, but her heart had calmed itself. She nodded to let him know his request was granted.

"You must understand," he began, looking straight at her with such frankness that she felt embarrassed. "When we met you for the first time we were astonished to discover that there were more like us in the world. These murders that have been – two new bodies were discovered as early as this morning, but I digress, they're not the work of a regular human being, and no animal in or near this city could inflict that kind of damage. The idea that there could be somebody else with abilities that match our own but who uses those abilities for such evil has been a constant worry since these murders came to light. When we met you for the first time I didn't believe anything ill of you, but the circumstances surrounding the deaths were unavoidable. I had to be sure."

"You thought I might have been killing those men," she said, and a rock settled in her stomach. It made sense, but it didn't make her feel any better. "So you read my mind."

"And for that, I truly am sorry," said Remus. "I only wished to know your identity and your true intentions. They became clear to me immediately and as you clearly wished to keep your identity under wraps I didn't see reason to share that information with the others. I let them know that you were to be trusted and I left it at that."

She nodded, but didn't feel relief. She felt ill.

"I can promise you that I have not taken the liberty of prying into your mind since and I never will again, but I have known who you really are for a long time, before James had ever seen you, I believe."

"You mean, before he saw me outside Kenzie's office?"

"I was surprised, as you can imagine, when he met you a few weeks later and told me all about him, but I haven't told him what I know and I don't intend to."

"Even though we've been on a date?" This couldn't be true. "Even though he's your friend?"

"Your secrets are yours to keep, not mine to tell," Remus interrupted her, but the interruption was so kindly given that she couldn't think him rude. "While I do believe that James will need to be told the truth eventually if you and he are going to continue seeing one another, that's only my opinion, and in any case, that decision should be yours to make."

"Wouldn't he be angry if he discovered who I was and knew that you had kept it from him for such a long time?"

"James is a very understanding person," he said. "An understanding person who believes that you were sent to the world in order to provide it with sunshine. If needs be I'll beg his forgiveness, but I know him, and I know he wouldn't believe that I've done anything wrong. If anything, I think he'd thank me for looking out for your best interests. If you're worried that he will think badly of you, well, you obviously don't know him well enough yet."

"You think so highly of him."

"I do," Remus agreed. "As do you, I believe."

Lily nodded and looked at her hands. Her mind wasn't at ease. The matter of whether or not she should tell James her secret was still a big issue, regardless of what Remus may have said. Her secret was one that she wanted to share with as few people as possible. Even Eddie did not know, and she and James were still only getting to know one another. Now should not have been the time for such intimate confessions but the fact that Remus knew made the inevitability of the fact all the more real. And terrifying. She didn't know how she was meant to begin to tell him the truth.

"You can generate fire?" said Remus. When Lily looked up and nodded, only barely aware of what they were talking about, he shrugged. "Don't worry, I didn't read your thoughts. I guessed as much earlier when you were asking about it."

"I know," Lily reassured him. "It's okay."

"How did you discover that about yourself?"

"Completely by accident, and it was _terrifying_," she said, and gave a small, half-hearted laugh as the recollection came to her. "I was trying to light a scented candle and the match wouldn't light, and I got frustrated, and the next thing I knew the entire candle had burst into flames."

"It happens," said Remus, nodding as if he understood. "I discovered my talent for reading minds when I was trying to figure out if Sirius was lying about stealing one of my onion rings."

"And was he?"

"One thing you should know about Sirius, is that when it comes to stolen food, he's usually always lying."

"I'll have to remember that."

"I dare say you will."

Seemingly satisfied by the way in which their conversation had been conducted, Remus placed his key in the car's ignition and started the engine. It whirred into life and the bottom of the tiny car began to vibrate, but then he switched it off abruptly, and turned in his seat, regarding her with look of great curiosity.

"Would it trouble you, perhaps, if I was to ask you one more thing?"

"Whatever you like," said Lily, with a shrug. He knew practically everything there was to know already, so what point was there in keeping anything else a secret? "I don't mind."

"How did you come by your powers?"

* * *

Her father had offered to drive her home that night.

She remembered that night, a bitterly cold November Tuesday. The rain had been torrential for close to three days. Lily had just recovered from a bad dose of bronchitis and had come to work in spite of her father's protests. However she didn't feel at all well, and cancelled her creative writing class so she could go home early, run a hot bath, curl up in bed with a good book or watch a movie with Mary and Eddie.

That had been how she lived her life, back then. It was quiet and uneventful, but she enjoyed having the freedom to do as she pleased and live how she wanted. It had been so much better than being with Brian. She had been so unhappy with him, but things were finally getting better. She felt like she belonged to herself again.

She agreed to let her father drive her home, after a lot of badgering. Walking so far in the rain would have been a bad idea in her condition. She decided to take advantage of the car by getting some groceries from the store around the corner. While her father closed the shop, she took a banknote from her purse and slipped it into her pocket, flung her jacket over her head and promised to be back in five minutes. She slipped out into the rain and walked with her head bent.

She did not see the man who followed her, not until she awoke the next day.


End file.
